The Enforcement Directorate on Wednesday carried out searches at former Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan’s residences in Kannur and Thiruvananthapuram as part of a money laundering investigation, reported The Hindu.
The central agency is investigating whether Cochin Minerals and Rutile Limited, a private company, paid around Rs 1.7 crore to a now-defunct information technology firm run by Vijayan’s daughter, T Veena, between 2017 and 2021.
The mining company, in which the Kerala State Industrial Development Corporation has 13.4% stake, had allegedly made the payments to Veena’s Exalogic Solutions with no evidence of any services rendered in return.
On Wednesday, the Enforcement Directorate carried out searches at about 12 locations in the state, including the homes of his daughter and son-in-law, former minister PA Muhammad Riyas, in Kozhikode. Offices linked to Cochin Minerals and Rutile Limited officials were also raided.
Exalogic Solutions had entered into a contract with the CMRL in 2017 for providing software and marketing services, The Wire reported.
The case had come to light after the income tax department carried out searches on the premises of the Cochin Minerals and Rutile Limited in 2023, when Vijayan was the chief minister of Kerala.
The raids came a day after the Kerala High Court on Tuesday dismissed a petition by CMRL seeking to quash the ED proceedings.
In a social media post, Vijayan’s son-in-law Riyas said: “We will fight till the last breath.”
Communist Party of India (Marxist) General Secretary A Baby condemned the searches, describing them as “a targeted attack on a top Opposition leader by the Bharatiya Janata Party government”.
“Such actions will not intimidate Pinarayi Vijayan or the CPI(M),” Baby added.
He also questioned whether the new Congress-led United Democratic Front government in Kerala was complicit in the action.
The CPI(M)’s Rajya Sabha MP John Brittas also condemned the “brazen ED raids”, describing it as “yet another example of the systematic misuse of central agencies to harass and target political opponents”.
“It is clear that the Congress leadership actively encouraged the ED to target him, just as they did in the case of Arvind Kejriwal,” he added.
In the Assembly election results announced on May 4, the UDF won 102 seats in the 140-member Assembly, defeating the CPI(M)-led Left Democratic Front after a decade in Opposition.
Edited by Sneha and Nachiket Deuskar.
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