Congress accuses BJP of receiving donations from shell firms, demands probe

New Delhi  :  The Congress on Wednesday accused the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of receiving donations from shell firms and looking the other way when the promoters of these firms allegedly indulged in "corruption".

"An investigation carried out by a media house has revealed the biggest financial scam the country has ever seen. This reveals BJP's full acceptance of corruption. DHFL, a private non-banking financial company (NBFC) has routed Rs. 31,000 crore of public money through dozens of shell companies for personal gains," party spokesperson Priyanka Chaturvedi said. 

She said the Dewan Housing Finance Limited (DHFL), an NBFC allegedly gave unsecured loans worth crores of rupees to various shell companies linked to the promoters of DHFL.

"The main partners of DHFL, the Wadhavan family, formed dozens of shell companies. In the name of slum development and slum rehabilitation in Maharashtra, 45 of these shell companies were given loans worth a total of Rs. 14,282 crore without any security and ignoring necessary investigations," she said.

"However, the icing on the cake is the donation of about Rs 20 crore given by the promoters to BJP through these shell companies," she added.

She said that "according to documents available in public domain", RKW Developers Private Ltd, Skill Realtors Pvt Ltd and Darshan Developers Pvt Ltd, owned by the promoters of DHFL, gave a donation of Rs 19.5 crore to the BJP in 2014-15 and 2016-17 under the provisions of section 182 of Companies Act 2013. 

She said that as per law, before making any donations, a company must be in profit in three financial years, but this condition was "violated as none of these companies was in a position to give legal donations".

"The BJP chose not to even give the PAN details of these two companies to the Election Commission. Apart from this, Darshan Developers also donated Rs 7.5 crore to BJP in 2016-17, which was in losses of Rs 7,69,68,968 in 2016-17," she said.

"For a mere donation of Rs 20 crore, the BJP again chose to sell the nation to some more suited-booted friends," she added.

She demanded to know as to why the RBI, SEBI and Ministry of Finance had not initiated any investigation in this case, and stressed that the Congress party demands an "independent investigation of the charges".