Suspended IAS officer travelled thrice to the Gulf nations with Swapna Suresh, mentioned ED (FILE)
Kochi:
Suspended IAS officer M Sivasankar travelled thrice to the Gulf nations with Swapna Suresh, a key accused within the Kerala gold smuggling case, throughout 2017 and 2018, the Enforcement Directorate probing the cash trails of the racket knowledgeable a court docket in Kochi on Monday.
The submissions have been made earlier than the particular court docket for PMLA (Prevention of Cash Laundering Act) instances, because the ED filed a petition for judicial remand of Suresh, Sarith P S and Sandeep Nair on the finish of their custody with the company.
The three have been in ED custody since August 5.
Referring to the questioning of Mr Sivasankar, former principal secretary to Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, the ED mentioned it was revealed that in April, 2017 Suresh had travelled to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) with him.
Once more, in April 2018 the girl had travelled to Oman and met Mr Sivasankar who was on a go to there then and so they returned collectively to India from the Gulf nation, it mentioned.
“It’s additional revealed that in October 2018 A-2 (Suresh) and Sivasankar travelled collectively to UAE and returned collectively and this explicit journey was coupled with the go to of the Chief Minister of Kerala to UAE for searching for help of Indians there for flood aid in Kerala”, the ED submitted.
The court docket remanded the accused to judicial custody until August 26.
The ED additionally mentioned Suresh stored the proceeds of the crime in a financial institution locker collectively operated with a 3rd individual as per the instruction of Mr Sivasankar.
Additionally opposing the bail plea of the accused, the ED mentioned an in-depth investigation into these points was to be performed.
The bail utility within the ED case is more likely to come up for listening to on Tuesday.
Final week, the NIA particular court docket and the Further Chief Judicial Justice of the Peace, Financial Offences, right here have dismissed the bail plea of the three.
The company had questioned Sivasankar on Saturday for the second time.
It had earlier filed a written submission within the court docket that the officer, suspended after his hyperlinks to Suresh surfaced, was totally conscious that the integrity of the girl was doubtful.
The company which recorded the formal arrest of the three accused on July 22 whereas they have been within the custody of the Nationwide Investigation Company (NIA), had on Friday knowledgeable the court docket that Suresh has claimed that she had “appreciable affect” within the Chief Minister’s Workplace.
Mr Sivasankar had additionally been interrogated earlier by the NIA and the Customs (Preventive) Commissionerate probing separate instances associated to the gold smuggling utilizing diplomatic channels of UAE consulate by means of worldwide airport in Thiruvananthapuram.
(Aside from the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV employees and is revealed from a syndicated feed.)
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