An Income Tax Department investigation has been ordered into the dealings made by Sanjay Bhandari, the arms dealer. Along with Sanjay and a few political involvements, the IT department has also unearthed some unknown facts about Robert Vadra, Sonia Gandhi’s son-in-law. The spotlight has traveled from the arms dealing to the alleged ownership of a Central London home, under the name of none other than, Robert Vadra.
Last month the IT department had seized some papers from Bhandari’s home and they had also discovered a communication between Sanjay’s aide Sumit Chadha, Robert Vadra, and his assistant regarding a UK home for which Vadra is said to have shelled out an amount of Rs 19 crores. The communication is said to have been dated back to 2009. The property had been sold further in 2010 but only after expensive renovation work had been done on it.
The Times of India followed up the story and has uncovered that Vadra’s legal firm has denied owning the house in London “directly or indirectly”. The firm has also denied that Vadra has any business connections with Chadha or Bhandari. The statement given by Vadra’s legal firm states “Our clients wish to categorically and unequivocally state that they do not own, directly or indirectly, any house described by you as House No.12, Ellerton House, Bryanston Square, London.”
The response of the firm has not admitted to anything about Chadha or Bhandari knowing Vadra but they stated “Our clients have no business relations with Sanjay Bhandari. Our clients further state that they have not entered into any transaction of a financial nature with Sanjay Bhandari or Chadha. Our Clients are being made targets of an unjustified persecution and witch-hunt by false leakages by the government”.
In another response recorded by the NDTV, the law firm has said that Vadra had no idea of Bhandari and his “defense transactions” and the firm also insisted “our clients have scrupulously avoided even being remotely involved in relation to any defence transaction”. Now that the IT probe is on, some definite answers will surely be raising their heads. Bhandari had come under the IT department eye in 2015 after questions regarding his tax evasion schemes and “Money laundering” tactics had raised heads. Bhandari’s name has been involved in a connection of black money and Political parties and we have yet to unearth Vadra and his “interests”.
