ED to question another top aide of Kerala CM
TRIVANDRUM: Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan appears to be in for another embarrassment with the anti-corruption investigators set to question another key aide of him.
The Enforcement Department (ED) investigating economic offences asked his additional private secretary CM Raveendran to appear for questioning on Thursday.
The ED sleuths arrested Vijayan’s principal secretary M Sivasankar on Oct.28 in the same case involving a gold smuggling ring, and he remains an undertrial prisoner since.
Political observers see the questioning while the crucial civic elections are underway as a huge setback for him and his Communist Party of India (Marxist) or CPI ( M) and its ruling partners. Last week, the ED sleuths had conducted a series of raids on business firms where Raveendran had allegedly parked the boodle.
They had summonsed Raveendran twice last month, but he got admited to the hospital, first ater testing positive for COVID-19 and later for more tests.
Besides the ED, the counter-terror National Investigation Agency (NIA) and Customs are also investigating different angles of the case.
The scam surfaced when the Customs seized 30kg of gold smuggled in at the airport here camouflaged as diplomatic baggage and arrested a person named Sarith.
Soon, the NIA launched a hunt for Swapna Suresh and caught her within a week on July 11 from Bangalore in the neighbouring Karnataka state with her accomplice.
Suresh was working as the business development manager of the Kerala State IT Infrastructure Limited (KSITIL) under Sivasankar, known as Vijayan’s man.
Before leaving the state, allegedly with the support of the state police, she sent out a voice message claiming atempts to tarnish the image of the Vijayan dispensation. Sivasankar is the fith defendant as a beneficiary. The scam also saw another head in the CM’S office, his IT fellow Arun Balachandran, rolling.
During the investigation, the ED also found that there was a close link between gold smuggling and psychedelic drug haul in Bangalore.
Bineesh Kodiyeri, son of the CPI (M) state secretary on leave Kodiyeri Balakrishnan whom the ED says funded the drug trade, is now imprisoned in Bangalore in the case.
The drug ring surfaced on Aug.28 ater the arrest of Kodiyeri’s close friend on his own admission, Anoop Mohammad, and two others in Bangalore.
The ED, which had frozen all transactions of Kodiyeri’s assets, has also sought details of immovable assets of Raveendran and his family from the state authorities.