M. Sivasankar, former Principal Secretary to Kerala Chief Minister, has filed a bail application in the High Court. Earlier, a special judge, considering the case the Enforcement Directorate (ED) had filed against him under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, had rejected his bail petition. Mr. Sivasankar said the ED could not produce any material to prove his involvement in the crime. Though it had obtained eight signed statements of Swapna Suresh, she had not implicated him.
He contended that the ED could not come up with any materials to implicate him and connect him with the predicate offence, the gold smuggling case.
The ED deviated from its allegation that the cash found in the locker of Swapna was the proceeds from the gold smuggling. It later stated that the money was part of the kickbacks received for some Kerala government projects related to flood relief. This showed that the ED deviated from its initial case of predicate offence, he submitted.
Procedures flouted
The materials collected by the investigating agency was not enough to arrest the petitioner and the agency did not comply with the procedure prescribed in the PML Act to arrest him, he submitted. One of the main allegations levelled against the petitioner was that he introduced Swapna to a Chartered Accountant, which took place in 2018. However, during the period, there was no flood relief projects such as the LIFE Mission. The case of gold smuggling was non-existent at that time, he contended.