New Delhi: At least 45 companies with suspicious funding sources donated money to political parties through electoral bonds, The Hindu has found. Much of the money coming from them went to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Thirty-three of these companies, the newspaper reported, had negative or near-zero profits, yet donated an aggregate sum of Rs 576.2 crore in electoral bonds. The BJP got nearly 75% of this amount, at Rs 434.2 crore. “The aggregate net losses of these 33 companies were over ₹1 lakh crore,” the report stated.
“That these loss-making companies made such substantial donations indicates they could be acting as fronts for other firms or have misreported their profits and losses — raising the possibility of money laundering,” according to The Hindu.
Of the total number of electoral bonds worth Rs 12,008 crore sold between 2017-2018 and 2022-2023, the BJP has received nearly 55% or Rs 6,564 crore.