Fresh ED summons to Deshmukh in money laundering case
MUMBAI: A day after the Supreme Court refused to grant any interim relief to former Maharashtra home minister Anil Deshmukh and his son Hrishikesh in a corruption-extortion probe, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) asked him to appear at the agency’s south Mumbai office on Wednesday. This is the fifth summons issued to the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader.
ED registered a money laundering case against Deshmukh after the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) filed a first information report (FIR) against him on April 21, following former Mumbai Police chief Param Bir Singh’s allegation — levelled in March — that Deshmukh had directed a police officer to extort ₹100 crore a month from hotels and bars. Deshmukh has denied all allegations against him multiple times.
ED has claimed that its probe suggests that Deshmukh misused his position as state home minister, and through assistant police inspector Sachin Vaze — who has now been dismissed and is in Taloja jail for his alleged role in the Antilia explosives scare and Mansukh Hiran murder cases — collected ₹4.7 crore from Mumbai’s bars for their “smooth functioning”.
The agency added that this money was later, through hawala channels, sent to two brothers in Delhi who operated bogus companies and later diverted the money as donations to Nagpurbased Shri Sai Shikshan Sansthan, an educational trust controlled by the Deshmukhs.
ED claimed to have identified 24 private entities that are controlled by the Deshmukhs and said they made huge monetary transactions without much rationale. “From the analysis of the accounts of these companies, it is clear that there is no rationale for the transfers, and thus it can be said that these series of transactions were meant for inflating balance sheets and layering of money from one company to other,” ED had stated.
The agency arrested Deshmukh’s personal secretary Sanjeev Palande and assistant Kundan Shinde on June 26, claiming their role in laundering of money on Deshmukh’s directions. In July, ED provisionally attached Deshmukh’s properties worth ₹4.2 crore.