Filmmaker Puri Jagannadh and producer Charmme Kaur were questioned by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Thursday over the funding of their last release Liger.
Liger was directed by Puri Jagannadh and it starred Vijay Deverakonda, Ramya Krishnan and Ananya Panday. Despite being aggressively promoted as a pan-India film, Liger failed at the box office.
Following reports that money used to fund the film came from a foreign source, which is a clear violation of the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA) of 1999, ED summoned Puri and Charmme to confirm the identity of their investors. According to the report, Puri and Charmme were grilled by the officers for 15 to 16 hours over illegal investments in the Vijay Deverakonda-led film via Foreign Exchange.
The reports stated that the investigation on Liger’s team began when a politician, Congress leader Bakka Judson, lodged a complaint with the ED in August. In the complaint, he stated that many politicians had invested money in Liger. He also pointed out that many invested in the film so as to turn their black money into white.
