CC Thampi to stay in ED Custody for four more days

New Delhi: A Delhi court on Friday sent UAE-based businessman CC Thampi to the custody of the Enforcement Directorate (ED) for four more days for interrogation.
Appearing on behalf of ED, Advocate Amit Mahajan told the court that “some new facts have surfaced” in the investigation which need to be put to Thampi.

Opposing further custodial interrogation, Thampi’s lawyer Raju Ramachandran said that the NRI businessman had already made 16 appearances before the agency and has been questioned for over 80 hours.

The agency told the court that the investigation has made some progress and that three witnesses have been summoned of which two are yet to turn up. ED has claimed that after Thampi’s questioning, certain more transactions have surfaced for which they require his further interrogation. Thampi’s further custody was required to confront him with two persons, said the investigating agency.

The ED arrested Thampi last Friday, in connection with an ongoing probe into alleged money laundering and acquisition of undisclosed foreign assets linked to Robert Vadra. He is alleged to be an associate of absconding arms dealer Sanjay Bhandari and Vadra, the son-in-law of Congress president Sonia Gandhi.


Vadra, who had denied any wrongdoing, told the ED during questioning in February last year that he had met Thampi on board an Emirates flight. However, during his questioning in connection with another case in April 2017, Thampi had purportedly told the ED that he had met Vadra through Sonia Gandhi’s personal assistant PP Madhavan.

This contradiction in statements was being used by the agency to corner Thampi, who controls UAE-based Skylight Investments and the Holiday Group.

As per the ED, the name of a company, SkyLight Investment FZE, was changed to Mayfair Investment FZE in 2011in a bid to remove the possibility of finding any links between the names Vadra’s companies in India and the UAE.

Thampi, who held 100% shareholding of SkyLight Investment, transferred his shareholding to his nephew Vadakkthela Cheru Geevar in 2011 without any monetary consideration. As per the ED, Geever worked as a driver in the UAE and the transfer of the property was done to keep the beneficial owner intact. After I-T raids on Bhandari in April 2016, the ownership of Mayfair was transferred to a UAE national in June 2016, it said.