NEW DELHI: A special court in Delhi on Friday adjourned till April 28 hearing on the bail plea filed by corporate lobbyist Deepak Talwar in a money laundering case related to illegally receiving foreign funding.
Special judge Ajay Kumar Kuhar while adjourning the hearing said that the charge-sheet recently filed against Talwar was voluminous and that he needs time to go through the documents.
The court also directed the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and the accused to file several essential documents related to the matter.
Advocate Amit Mahajan, counsel for the ED, had earlier opposed the application, saying that it was not the right stage to entertain the bail plea.
In his bail application, Talwar has said that no purpose will be served by further keeping him in custody since the probe was already completed and there was no chance that the investigation could be hampered by his release.
The same court had recently taken the cognizance on the ED charge-sheet in a case of alleged violations of the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) by an NGO linked to Talwar, who is currently in judicial custody in the matter.
The ED case was registered based on an FIR filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in November 2017 in a complaint of FCRA violations involving more than Rs 90 crore against Talwar.
The allegations are that Advantage India, an NGO, whose Deepak Talwar is a founding member, had received foreign contributions of Rs 90.75 crore 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 the funds were siphoned off for non-mandated purposes by booking bogus expenditure under various heads to show that foreign donations were utilised for mandated purposes.
A Delhi court had earlier dismissed Talwar's interim bail application on medical grounds in view of the coronavirus pandemic noting that he was lodged in Tihar central jail here, where all the facilities were available. (ANI)