ED in SC: NewsClick received 86cr in ‘illicit foreign funding’

NEW DELHI: In its appeal before the Supreme Court in the NewsClick case, Enforcement Directorate (ED) has questioned the news portal’s ownership and service arrangements with foreign entities. The agency has said the Peoples Dispatch website was initially owned and controlled by NewsClick, while the American Justice and Education Fund was paying NewsClick to upload material onto it.

The enforcement agency has questioned the commercial justification for those payments.ED filed a fresh plea in SC in the case against NewsClick and its ‘ illicit foreign funding’ with details of NewsClick’s modus operandi, its receipt of nearly Rs 86 crore in foreign funds through arrangements ‘designed to make foreign contributions appear as legitimate business transactions’.According to ED, the issue was not simply that NewsClick had received foreign money.

The issue was that foreign charitable contributions were deliberately presented as investments and commercial payments to circumvent Indian regulations governing foreign funding of news organisations. The agency has cited recovered emails, company documents, financial transactions, valuation reports, contracts and statements recorded during its investigation as evidence.Agency sources said NewsClick had received payments from US-based Justice and Education Fund (JEF) for articles, videos and other content uploaded onto Peoples Dispatch.

“The service agreement was a device for regular foreign funding rather than a genuine commercial arrangement,” a senior official said.“An email dated Aug 21, 2017, from the portal’s former HR head Amit Chakraborty explicitly discussed changing NewsClick’s company documents to obtain foreign investment without permission from the ministry of information and broadcasting. The email stated: The purpose of the same is that we want foreign investment without the permission of the ministry of information,” according to the agency.Sources said ED had relied on statement of the portal’s Prashanth Radhakrishnan that JEF owned peoplesdispatch.org only from April 2021 and NewsClick owned it previously. It was NewsClick’s team that determined content quality and terms, supporting its contention that JEF’s payments were not ordinary arm’s length purchases.

Sources said NewsClick is also being investigated for Tricontinental and other international funding connections, keeping in mind a Jan 2018 email discussing how Tricontinental could begin operations in India through a private limited company receiving US investment, rather than immediately seeking approval to receive foreign grants as a non-profit.“This has acquired wider relevance following recent Fox News reports concerning tech entrepreneur Neville Roy Singham, Tricontinental and their alleged links to international protest movements, including demonstrations in Paris,” an official said.