ED registers financial wrongdoing cases against AAP leaders

The Enforcement Directorate has registered money laundering cases against Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leaders in connection with alleged scam in hospital construction, CCTV, and shelter home constructions worth Rs 6,368 crore, officials said on Friday.

The federal agency is now likely to send summonses to these leaders.

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The CBI and ACB are also investigating the alleged financial wrongdoings.

In the hospital construction case, AAP leaders Saurabh Bhardwaj and Satyendra Jain were booked by the Anti-Corruption Branch (ACB), Delhi for alleged corruption in health infrastructure projects involving 24 hospitals and expenditure of Rs 5,590 crore by the party-led then Delhi government.

The cheating, breach of trust and conspiracy case was registered after the Centre, on the recommendation of Lieutenant Governor V K Saxena, granted sanction for proceedings against the previous Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government’s minister under Section 17A of the Prevention of Corruption Act.

The financial embezzlement linked to the projects, mired in inexplicable delays and astronomical cost overruns, took place in 2018-19.

Massive irregularities, unexplained delays, and significant misappropriation of funds were found in the construction of various hospitals, polyclinics and ICU infrastructure across the city, said an investigator.

Substantial deviations and cost escalations, amounting to several hundred crores, were observed.

Not a single project was completed within the prescribed timeline, said the complaint by the then Leader of Opposition, Vijender Gupta.

It named former Delhi health ministers Bhardwaj and Jain, alleging systematic manipulation of project budgets, misuse of public funds, and collusion with private contractors.

In the CCTV ‘scam’ of Rs 571 crore, a project was launched by the AAP government in 2019 to install 1.4 lakh CCTV cameras across all 70 Assembly constituencies in the national capital. The contract was awarded, but the work was not completed on time.

In the shelter home case, the ED has alleged corruption in the Delhi Urban Shelter Improvement Board (DUSIB) during AAP’s tenure, claiming that Rs 207 crore was embezzled using fake fixed deposit receipts.