KOCHI: The Enforcement Directorate served notice to the additional private secretary on Kerala CM Pinarayi Vijayan’s staff, CM Raveendran, asking him to appear before it for questioning at its Kochi office on Friday.
The ED is probing the money-laundering aspect of the Kerala gold smuggling case. Raveendran was summoned in connection with the probe into several IT-related projects undertaken by the government. It is learnt that the notice was issued on the basis of statements by bureaucrat M Sivasankar.
The ED is also probing four major projects of the government — the Kerala Fibre Optic Network, an e- mobility project, a downtown project connected with Technopark’s Phase-III and the Smart City project in Kochi. Sources said the ED had also received a statement from Swapna Suresh in August saying that Raveendran used to call her once in a while for visa stamping and attestation of certificates. Raveendran, a close confidant of the CM, has been on the CM’s personal staff whenever LDF came to power.