ED summons NC chief Farooq Abdullah for questioning in JKCA funds fraud case

The Enforcement Directorate has summoned National Conference president Farooq Abdullah for questioning on Thursday in a money laundering case, said official sources. The MP from Srinagar Lok Sabha seat was charge sheeted by the federal agency in the case in 2022. The summons has asked Abdullah, a former chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir, to depose at the ED office in Srinagar, according to a report published by the news agency The 86 year old politician is understood to have been called in connection with the federal agency's investigation into alleged irregularities in the .

The case relates to siphoning off the funds of the Jammu and Kashmir Cricket Association by way of transfer to various personal bank accounts of unrelated parties, including those of JKCA office bearers, and by way of unexplained cash withdrawals from JKCA bank accounts, the ED had said. The agency's case is based on a 2018 charge sheet filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) against the same accused.

In 2020, the CBI filed a charge sheet against Abdullah, Mohammed Saleem Khan, former treasurer Ahsan Ahmad Mirza as well as Mir Manzoor Gazanffer Ali, Bashir Ahmad Misgar and Gulzar Ahmad Beigh (former accountant of JKCA) for the "misappropriation of amounting to 43.69 crore" from grants given by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) to promote the sport in the state between 2002 11.

The federal agency had said its probe found that JKCA received 94.06 crore from BCCI in three different bank accounts during the financial years 2005–2006 to 2011–2012 (up to December 2011). ED had claimed that in 2004 the then "duly elected Treasurer Mukhtar Kanth resigned and immediately appointed Mirza as Treasurer of JKCA without holding elections as mandated under the JKCA Rules, 1957." Livemint tops charts as the fastest growing news website in the world to know more.

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