Sivasankar on radar for possible benami angle

The central agencies probing the case involving gold smuggling through diplomatic channels are looking into the possibility of benami deals by M Sivasankar, the former principal secretary to the Kerala Chief Minister.

The ED, which questioned Sivasankar for 25 hours over two sessions, before letting him go, has collected important leads in the case. It had questioned him for 20 hours continuously, away from the public gaze when all media attention was focussed on the Kozhikode plane crash and the landslip in Munnar, with heavy casualties in both.

Swapna Suresh, the main accused in the gold smuggling case, has disclosed to the agencies the bank lockers, found with over Rs1 crore and 5kg of gold, were opened in 2018, a year before the gold smuggling operations were mounted.

The lockers were meant to facilitate the dubious deals of Swapna Suresh and the involvement of Sivasankar points to suspicions about benami deals on his behalf.

The ED now plans to further question Venugopal and Sivasankar to get clarity on their leads.

Swapna Suresh has claimed to the investigators that the money recovered from the bank lockers was the commission she got for the charity deal.

Meanwhile, NIA is leant to be preparing to question Sivasankar again on the basis of disclosures by Swapna and Venugopl as well as information collected by investigators in Dubai from Faisal Fareed, the key Dubai link in the gold smuggling case. Faisal is in the custody of Dubai Police.

NIA had already questioned Sivasankar for two days, after which he was allowed to go, but the investigators had indicated that he would be called for more questioning.