New Delhi, India – It was a quick chain of events. On November 10, 2022, India’s Enforcement Directorate – the country’s premier agency tasked with tackling financial corruption – arrested P Sarath Chandra Reddy, an entrepreneur in the southern city of Hyderabad, on allegations of involvement in a liquor scam in New Delhi.
Five days later, Aurobindo Pharma, a company in which Reddy is a director, bought electoral bonds worth 50 million rupees ($600,000). Until the Supreme Court declared them “unconstitutional” last month, these bonds – introduced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government in 2017 – were an opaque mechanism for businesses, individuals and organisations to donate funds to political parties.
