DK Shivakumar arrested in money laundering case, Cong calls it vendetta politics

Congress leaders on Tuesday slammed a section of BJP leaders who backed the action by the ED against Shivakumar.

After questioning him for four days in Delhi, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) arrested senior Karnataka Congress leader DK Shivakumar on Tuesday evening for allegedly laundering money and for suspected transactions done abroad through shell companies.

Congress leader DK Shivakumar.(PTI file photo)

A senior official of the anti-money laundering agency, who did not wish to be named, said, “We have found strong evidence that DK Shivakumar was instrumental in money laundering through hawala and shell companies. He was evasive during the questioning after which it was decided to arrest him.”

He would be produced before a special court on Wednesday morning.

A second ED official, who also requested anonymity, said Shivakumar was dodging questions about his association with Karnataka Bhavan employees in Delhi who used to allegedly store or manage illegal money on his behalf. The Congress leader was also evasive about the purpose of a trip to Singapore in July 2017 along with his daughter, this official added.

Minutes after his arrest, Shivakumar tweeted, “I congratulate my BJP [Bharatiya Janata Party] friends for finally being successful in their mission of arresting me. The IT [income tax] and ED cases against me are politically motivated and I am a victim of BJP’s politics of vengeance and vendetta.”

He appealed to his party cadre to not be disheartened. “I have done nothing illegal. I have full faith in god and in our country’s judiciary and am very confident that I will emerge victorious both legally and politically against this vendetta politics,” the Congress politician added.

The Congress termed the arrest as an attempt by the government to divert attention from its “economic mismanagement” and vowed to fight it legally and in the “people’s court”.

“India’s economy is in doldrums... to put a lid on all this, the BJP government is trying to divert the attention from the economic mismanagement by taking punitive and false actions in revengeful manner against the Congress leaders. The illegal arrest of DK Shivakumar is one more such step. He is innocent and there is not an iota of evidence against him,” Congress’s chief spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala told reporters.

A senior leader and former minister, Shivakumar is one of the Congress’s main troubleshooters in Karnataka and was instrumental in keeping party legislators together last year when a Janata Dal (Secular)-Congress coalition government was sworn in. The government fell earlier this year after a number of MLAs rebelled.

Former chief minister and JD(S) leader HD Kumaraswamy said the central government was trying to silence opposition leaders. “The ruling government is using investigation agencies to oppress those opposition leaders who they think are a threat to their interests,” he tweeted.

The ED first questioned Shivakumar on August 30 after the Karnataka high court denied him relief. He appeared before the agency again last Saturday and on Monday. After four hours of questioning on Tuesday, the ED officials arrested him.

Shivakumar came under the scanner of agencies on August 2, 2017, when large teams of the Income Tax department raided over 64 locations across Delhi and Karnataka linked to the leader, who was a minister in the state government.

At that time, 44 Gujarat MLAs were staying in a resort in Karnataka with links to Shivakumar, in order to keep the party flock together and stop the BJP from approaching them ahead of a crucial Rajya Sabha election in Gujarat where senior Congress leader Ahmed Patel was facing a tough battle.

The I-T department had claimed to recover unaccounted cash worth over ~10 crore and some jewellery during the raids.

In September 2018, the ED initiated a money laundering probe against Shivakumar and his associates, including Sunil Kumar Sharma, who was accused of transporting huge amounts of cash on a regular basis through hawala channels.

Other people accused were Shivakumar’s business partner Sachin Narayan, Delhi Karnataka Bhavan employee Anjeya Hanumanthaiah and N Rajendra, a caretaker of Karnataka Bhavan.

In a prosecution complaint (equivalent to a charge sheet) filed before the Special Court for Economic Offences at Bengaluru in June last year, the I-T department had claimed that Shivakumar had paid Rs 5 crore to the All India Congress Committee (AICC) through his political associate V Mulgund.

The I-T department had stated in its prosecution complaint that he ran a hawala network to avoid paying taxes.

The alleged payments to the AICC, according to the I-T department, were made in two tranches. The department added: “As per the facts and analysis of the evidences, it is clear that accused number 1 (Shivakumar) has set up an extensive network of persons and premises across Delhi and Bangalore in order to transport and utilise unaccounted cash”.

It added that in the diaries with alleged record of transactions, a clever code was allegedly used to evade detection, substituting weight in kilograms for lakhs of rupees.