The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Friday summoned another retired bureaucrat U V Jose in connection with alleged corruption in the Life Mission scheme for free houses for the homeless in Kerala. He is likely to be questioned along with M Sivasankar, a former principal secretary to the Kerala chief minister, who was arrested in the case on Tuesday.
Alleged irregularities in the scheme came to light when central agencies were probing the seizure of 30 kg of gold from a diplomatic bag meant to be delivered to the UAE consulate in Thiruvananthapuram in 2020.
Sivasankar spent 100 days in jail in connection with the gold smuggling case. The agencies allegedly found ₹one crore cash and two kg of gold from the bank lockers of Swapna Suresh, the main accused in the smuggling case.
Suresh reportedly told the agencies that the money was allegedly the commission received for clinching a deal with the international aid agency Red Crescent that funded a housing project for flood victims in Thrissur in 2019. She alleged Sivasankar asked her to keep the money in her locker.
Jose was director of the Life Mission project when Red Crescent provided the money for the Thrissur project.
People aware of the matter said Sivasankar was not cooperating with the investigation and trying to conceal facts and the role of bigwigs.
The agency is likely to summon Suresh also before Sivasankar’s remand ends on Monday. They said some of the accused will be questioned together.
ED cited WhatsApp chats between Sivasankar and Suresh in its request on Wednesday for the retired civil servant’s custody. The chats allegedly retrieved from Suresh’s phone were reproduced in ED’s remand application to a Kochi court to allege a nexus of government representatives in the allocation of contracts.
According to an excerpt of the chat ED quoted, Sivasankar reportedly told Swapna Suresh that the chief minister had given his nod to give her a job.
The opposition Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party have cited the purported chat and targeted Pinarayi Vijayan.
Ruling Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader M V Govindan on Friday said neither the party nor government has anything to do with Sivasankar. “This is not the first time he was arrested. We are not bothered.”
The Central Bureau of Investigation registered a case related to the housing project in October 2020 under the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act.
People aware of the matter cited investigation and said ₹18.50 crore was allegedly collected from the foreign aid agency through the UAE consulate and only ₹14.50 crore was spent on the project.
The rest of the money or ₹4 crore was allegedly paid to the government and consulate officials as a bribe. Suresh reportedly told agencies that Sivashankar asked her to keep his part of the share in her locker.