Special court grants bail to corporate lobbyist Deepak Talwar in money laundering case
May 01, 2020
New Delhi [India], May 1 : A special court in Delhi on Friday granted bail to corporate lobbyist Deepak Talwar in connection with a money laundering case related to illegally receiving foreign funding.
Special judge Ajay Kumar Kuhar, while allowing his bail plea, told Talwar to cooperate with the investigation and not try to influence witnesses in the case or hamper the probe.
Talwar was lodged in Tihar Jail under judicial custody and was facing various corruption and money laundering cases related to his corporate deals.
During the hearing, which was held through video conferencing, Enforcement Directorate had strongly opposed his bail plea and argued that Talwar was an accused of serious economic offences and if granted relief he may flee from justice.
ED said that the accused was already absconding from justice prior to his arrest and he had to be brought from Dubai through deportation.
Deepak Takwar's lawyers, on the other hand, submitted that no purpose will be served by keeping him in custody in the matter and the probe is already over.
All the evidence in the case were documentary in nature and has been recovered by the probe agency, lawyer submits while seeking bail for Deepak Talwar.
The same court had recently taken cognizance on the ED charge-sheet in a case of alleged violations of the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) by an NGO linked with Talwar.
The ED case is based on an FIR registered by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in November 2017 in a complaint of FCRA violations involving more than Rs 90 crore against Deepak Talwar.
The allegations are that Advantage India, an NGO, whose Deepak Talwar is a founding member of, had received foreign contributions of Rs 90.75 crores from MBDA England (Leading European Missile Manufacturer) and Airbus France under CSR funding.
According to the ED, it has been revealed that Advantage India did not spend all the funds of FCRA on the mandated purposes and that the funds were siphoned off for non-mandated purposes by booking bogus expenditure under various heads to show that foreign donations were utilized for mandated purposes.
A Delhi court had earlier dismissed Talwar's interim bail application sought on medical grounds in view of coronavirus noting that he was lodged in Tihar central jail here, where all the facilities were available.
