Kamal Ghorui
NEW DELHI: Ten days after ED carried out searches at several premises in Delhi, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Mumbai of officials of Indian Political Action Committee (I-PAC) – a political consultancy firm whose clients include TMC and DMK – the agency on Monday arrested one of its directors and co-founder Vinesh Chandel here. He will be produced before a special court in Delhi for custodial interrogation. Chandel’s arrest comes in connection with ED’s probe against I-PAC in a money-laundering case linked to an alleged coal scam in West Bengal. On April 2, the agency had also searched premises of Vijay Nair, former communication advisor of Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and one of the accused in Delhi liquor scam.
Certain past payments to I-PAC under lens
Sources said the dealings of Vijay Nair, former communication adviser of AAP, with I-PAC are under investigation and certain transactions related to payments to the political consultancy firm in the past are being probed. I-PAC’s directors Pratik Jain and Rishi Raj Singh were two others whose premises were searched on April 2 after they refused to appear before the agency despite repeated summonses.Earlier in Jan, ED conducted searches on I-PAC’s office and Jain’s residence in Kolkata. The operation was disrupted by CM Mamata Banerjee.In a release issued after its operation was disrupted, ED stated that it had visited I-PAC’s office to follow up on its finding that “one hawala operator linked to layering of proceeds of crime of coal smuggling had facilitated transactions of tens of crores of rupees to I-PAC”.ED said searches covered persons linked to generation of coal smuggling proceeds, hawala operators and handlers.
