The president of the Trinamul Youth Congress, Saayoni Ghosh, appeared before a team of Enforcement Directorate officers on Friday for questioning, responding to a summons sent out to her earlier this week.
Saayoni faced interrogators from a little before noon. It was still on when the report was filed around 9pm.
Saayoni, also a Bengali film and TV actress, turned up at the CGO Complex, which houses the regional office of the ED in Salt Lake, around 11.30am. Before that, she said she would fully cooperate with the central agency.
"I was busy campaigning (for the July 8 rural polls). The ED summoned me within a period of 48 hours and here I am," Saayoni told reporters on her way to the ED office.
"I will extend 100 per cent cooperation," she added.
Ahead of Friday, senior officers of the central investigating agency said they wanted to clarify with Saayoni a few issues that surfaced during the scrutiny of a series of financial transactions of Kuntal Ghosh, an arrested former Trinamul Youth Congress leader.
The ED arrested Kuntal in January for his alleged role in irregularities in recruitment in state-aided schools.
The party subsequently expelled him.
Saayoni, who lost the 2021 Assembly polls for Trinamul from Asansol South to BJP's Agnimitra Paul, did not deny knowing Kuntal after several pictures of them surfaced.
On Friday, Saayoni was escorted to the sixth-floor office of the ED and made to feel comfortable before the questioning began a little before noon, sources said.
ED officers then started questioning Saayoni, throwing in a break in between for around half an hour.
Saayoni was asked to appear with details of her bank transactions and income tax returns for the last 10 years. Senior officers said investigators wanted to understand the source of funds for the properties she owned.
"The basic premise is to understand the funding process and try and identify if proceeds of crime were parked with anyone," said a senior ED officer, who is not a part of this interrogating team. "Kuntal collected crores from prospective candidates by promising them jobs and parked money in properties and projects."
