A company promoted by businessman Jignesh Shah, who was arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation in a case of alleged market irregularities in 2016, rented a farmhouse owned by Congress President Rahul Gandhi and his sister Priyanka Gandhi in 2013, The Indian Express reported on Monday. The transaction raises questions of propriety as investigation against Shah in several cases of money laundering were initiated in 2012 under the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance.

The agreement for the 4.69-acre Delhi farmhouse was signed on February 1, 2013, between the Gandhis and Financial Technologies India Ltd, backed by Shah, who also promoted National Spot Exchange Ltd. The lease was signed almost 10 months after NSEL was issued a showcause notice for alleged violation of norms. FTIL (now called 63 Moons Technologies Ltd) gave an “interest free deposit of Rs 40.20 lakh vide two separate cheques of Rs 20.10 lakh” to Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi as it wanted to use the property as a guesthouse for its officers.

The NSEL scam came to light in July 2013 when the government asked the company to suspend spot trading. The rent agreement for the farmhouse was prematurely ended in October 2013.

In March 2015, the Enforcement Directorate prosecuted NSEL and 67 others in connection with the fraud amounting to Rs 5,600 crore. The agency had said that NSEL funds were “illegally ploughed into purchase of private properties”.

Both the Congress and the FTIL described this as a routine business transaction. Congress spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala said the farmhouse was an ancestral property and had been rented out for many years. He said there was no question of impropriety as the rent received from the tenancy had been disclosed in the Income Tax returns.

“There was no question of any association or relationship or any intervention having been made by Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra in any ongoing proceedings either against FTIL or Jignesh Shah or any other person or entity related to them,” Surjewala said, accusing the National Democratic Alliance government of running a “smear campaign”.

An official spokesperson of 63 Moons Technologies said the company rented the farmhouse “in the normal course of business like most other corporates do and was for the purpose of stay of company officials and its representatives”.

The Enforcement Directorate on November 29 sought from FTIL details of its rent agreement.

The UPA regime followed a policy of “bargain for bribe exchange”, said Bharatiya Janata Party spokesperson Sambit Patra at a press conference in Delhi, accusing the Congress of wide-scale corruption. “The property was rented out to a scamster by Rahul Gandhi,” he said. “Corruption and the Congress party are synonymous.”