MUMBAI: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Tuesday arrested the former MD of a private security firm in the money laundering case on late Monday.
Tops Grup MD M Sashidharan's arrest comes after the arrest of Amit Chandole, a close associate of Shiv Sena MLA Pratap Sarnaik.
It is alleged that Sashidharan’s office was coordinating with Chandole about the kickback his company was sharing with Sarnaik every month through Chandole.
The ED had called Sashidharan for questioning on Monday and subsequently arrested him. The ED was due to produce him before the special court for his remand on Tuesday.
During the investigation, the ED officials learnt that Tops Grup owner Rahul Nanda’s daughter Rasshi Nanada was directing the company employees, including Sashsidharan, to destroy the case-related evidence and computer data from their offices after the ED registered a money laundering case against them.
Recently, Sashidharan has filed a complaint with the Mumbai police on behalf of Rahul Nanda, alleging that former director of the Tops Grup—Ramesh Iyer—had cheated the company.
Ramesh Iyer is a key witness in the ED case where he admitted the entire role of Nanda and Sarnaik to cheat the state government agency—MMRDA—and shared the profit equally.
Iyer told the ED officials in his statement that Chandole was a close confidante of Sarnaik and Tops Grup was sharing the money with Sarnaik through Chandole. Sarnaik helped Tops Grup to get a contract of supplying private security guards to Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) in 2014.
Iyer and Amar Panghal—ex finance director of Tops Grup—told ED officials that the company was providing only 70% of the total agreed guards, but billed MMRDA for the total number of guests mentioned in the agreement.
Neeraj Bilani, ex-CEO of Tops Grup, told in his statement to ED that Chandole used to coordinate with the finance department of his company to collect kickback on behalf of Sarnaik, mostly in cash.
The ED officials confronted Sashidharan about the MMRDA contract and collected details, but he denied sharing any information which led to his arrest.