DK Shivakumar Money Laundering Case: Congress MLA Lakshmi Hebbalkar to appear before ED tomorrow

BENGALURU: Lakshmi Hebbalkar, the Congress MLA from Belagavi Rural, will appear before the Enforcement Directorate (ED) officials in Delhi on Thursday in response to the agency's summons.

The Congress MLA, who is close to senior Congress leader DK Shivakumar, said she will appear before the ED as required. The former Minister is said to have made a telephone call to Hebbalkar during the income tax raids on him. It is not known if the ED has stumbled upon anything else in terms of financial transactions between the two as Hebbalkar is a known protege of Shivakumar, who is being interrogated by the ED officials in a money laundering case.

The ED probe follows Income Tax raids on the former Minister in 2017 and detection and recovery of unaccounted wealth. The ED later stepped in after the IT department came across instances of alleged money laundering.


The ED officials began questioning him early this month. The ED advocate has told the designated court that the Congress leader remained evasive and non-cooperative throughout the questioning. The former minister is currently in judicial custody in Delhi, and his bail plea is coming up for hearing today.

The IT department had raided Shivakumar in August 2017, among the other places, at Eagleton Golf Resort on the outskirts of Bengaluru where he had hosted a group of Congress MLAs from Gujarat to secure them from any poaching attempts during the Rajya Sabha polls in which Political Secretary to AICC president Ahmed Patel was a candidate.