ED summons seven PFI officials, linked NGO members in PMLA case

NEW DELHI: The ED has summoned seven office bearers of PFI and an NGO linked to it in connection with a money laundering probe against them, officials said on Tuesday.

They said the office bearers of the Kerala-based Popular Front of India (PFI) and those from Rehab India Foundation have been asked to depose before the investigating officer of the case here on Wednesday.

There was no response to queries sought by PTI in this context from the two organisations.

The summonses have been issued under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), sources said.

The development comes in the backdrop of the Enforcement Directorate (ED) finding that the recent violent protests in Uttar Pradesh and other parts of the country against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act had an alleged “financial link” with PFI but the organisation had termed this as “baseless”.

“The Popular Front of India has stated it multiple times that we fully comply with the law of the land and the allegation of Rs 120 crore transferred from the Popular Front’s accounts just before the CAA protests is totally baseless and the people who are levelling these allegations should prove these claims,” the organisation had said in a statement issued on Monday.

PFI was booked by the ED under the PMLA in 2018.

The agency is also probing the remittances and withdrawal of funds from 9 bank accounts of Rehab India, officials said, apart from a deposit of Rs 20 lakh from Dubai in its accounts.

On its website, Rehab India said it was launched in 2018 and its “aim was to rehabilitate the marginalised section of rural India with a better standard of living by the channelling the building rocks of a just society ie Education, Health, Economic Development and Environment”.