ED Searches Soros Funding Agency OSF

New Delhi/Bengaluru: The Enforcement Directorate conducted searches in Bengaluru on Tuesday as part of an alleged foreign exchange violation case against US billionaire George Soros-founded ‘private funding agency’ OSF and its investment arm EDF, official sources said.

Eight premises of some of the beneficiaries of Open Society Foundations (OSF) and Economic Development Fund (EDF), including those linked to some international human rights bodies, and a company named Aspada Investments Pvt. Ltd. were searched under the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA), the sources said.

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) sources called Aspada Investments as the investment adviser or fund manager of Soros EDF (SEDF) in India and as a ‘wholly-owned subsidiary’ of a Mauritius entity. The SEDF is the “impact investment arm of the Open Society Foundations (OSF)”, the sources said. The investigation pertains to alleged foreign direct investment (FDI) being sourced by the two Soros entities and the utilisation of these funds by certain beneficiaries in alleged contravention of FEMA guidelines. The ED sources said the initial probe found that OSF was put under the prior reference category by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) in 2016, thereby restricting it from giving unregulated donations to NGOs in India. In order to “bypass” this restriction, OSF had subsidiaries in India and brought in funds in the form of FDI and consultancy fees, and these funds have been used to fund activities of the NGOs which is a FEMA contravention, they said. The agency, the sources said, is examining the end use of other FDI funds brought in by Soros EDF and OSF. A response to an email sent by PTI to OSF is awaited.