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The Enforcement Directorate on Monday conducted multiple searches in Mumbai in connection with its money laundering probe against senior Nationalist Congress Party leader and former Maharashtra public works department minister Chhagan Bhujbal and others.
ED officials said the nine premises covered under the action included properties and offices belonging to Bhujbal, son Pankaj, nephew and former member of Parliament Samir and a few others.
A team of 20 officers of the Mumbai zonal unit of the agency is conducting the operation, they said.
The NCP described the searches as ‘political vendetta’.
“This is vendetta politics. This has been done to support the Bharatiya Janata Party whose MP Kirit Somaiya first makes a statement and then two days later, action (by the ED) happens,” NCP spokesperson Nawab Malik said.
“This proves that BJP plans and the agencies execute it. Our party has full faith in (the) judiciary,” he said.
ED officials said the investigating officer of the case is also recording the statement of Samir at its office in Mumbai after he was summoned for questioning sometime back.
The agency’s action came days after the Bombay high court, on January 28, sought progress reports from the Maharashtra Anti-Corruption Bureau and the ED in four weeks on their probe against Bhujbal and his family members.
The agency has filed two first information reports against the Bhujbals and others under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, based on earlier filed Mumbai police FIRs, to probe the Delhi-based Maharashtra Sadan construction scam and the Kalina land grabbing case.
The agency has also brought out three property attachment orders worth over Rs 280 crore in this probe case under money laundering laws.
The government, in the last Parliament session in December, had said that PMLA investigations against Bhujbal and others have showed that entities which have subscribed to companies controlled by the politician’s family were ‘dubious’ and their transactions were done only on paper.
Minister of State for Finance Jayant Sinha, in a written reply to Lok Sabha on December 18, had said a case has been registered by the ED against Bhujbal, his family members including MLA son Pankaj, ex-MP nephew Samir, a firm called Ms K S Chamankar Enterprises and others.
“Investigation conducted so far has revealed that the entities which have subscribed to the companies controlled by the Bhujbals were dubious companies which existed only on paper and their transactions are not genuine transactions,” he had said.
The Bombay high court, in December 2014, had constituted a Special Investigation Team comprising the ED director and the director general of state ACB to conduct the inquiry against the politician and others and submit a report to it.
The Mumbai police complaint names Pankaj and Samir and they had been booked under Indian Penal Code sections related to cheating, criminal conspiracy, criminal breach of trust and relevant provisions of Maharashtra Ownership Flats Act.