ED Searches Premises Linked to Trinamool Congress Over Alleged Routing of Party Funds

New Delhi: The Enforcement Directorate on Tuesday (July 4) conducted "searches" at five premises related to the All India Trinamool Congress (AITC) in West Bengal over alleged routing of “suspected funds” through certain bank accounts owned by the party.

The premises searched are associated with the Carewell Group of Companies, which operates in the aviation sector.

Sources told The Wire that, so far, the “investigation has revealed that approximately Rs 160 crore was transferred from AITC accounts to Carewell Aviation India Pvt. Ltd. and its related entity between April 2023 and June 2026.”

As per the agency, Carewell Aviation Pvt. Ltd. further routed an amount of Rs 82.96 crore, over 2023–26, to another newly incorporated related entity.

These searches are the first instance of the central investigative agency entering a probe that directly relates to a political party’s expenditures made from its own accounts. In the Delhi liquor policy case, the Aam Aadmi Party leadership was implicated by ED, but not the party itself.

Investigators allege that the transferred funds were used to purchase an Embraer Legacy 600 Aircraft  and one Agusta 109 SP helicopter. An amount of Rs 112 crore is said to have been used for these purchases.

The Legacy 600 Embraer and Agusta helicopter were rented out to the AITC itself, despite having been purchased from the party's own corpus.

An ED officer said, “These transactions appear dubious [and designed] to conceal the actual beneficiary of the funds”.

The investigative agency is yet to reveal the genesis of this investigation, as ED cannot initiate any investigation under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), 2002, without there being a scheduled offence. That is, a prior complaint must exist before a probe under the PMLA can be conducted.

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