Anil Deshmukh skips ED summons again; offers to cooperate with agency

Deshmukh has requested ED officials to wait for the outcome of the court proceedings that he intends to initiate. In the meantime, he has offered to make himself available for recording his statement by electronic medium of the agency’s choice

Former Maharashtra home minister Anil Deshmukh on Wednesday again skipped the summons issued by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in connection with the allegations of corruption and extortion against him.

Anil Deshmukh. (HT archive)

On Tuesday, the ED had issued fresh summons to the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader a day after the Supreme Court refused to grant any interim relief to him, and asked him to appear at the agency’s South Mumbai office.

However, today his counsel, advocate Inderpal Singh submitted a letter from the leader that he said he received on e-mail. In his letter, Deshmukh says that while refusing him interim relief, the apex court has granted him liberty to seek appropriate remedy available under the Code of Criminal Procedure and accordingly, he has decided to move appropriate court in a day or two.

Deshmukh has requested ED officials to wait for the outcome of the court proceedings that he intends to initiate. In the meantime, he has offered to make himself available for recording his statement by electronic medium of the agency’s choice.

ED has registered a money laundering case against Deshmukh after the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) filed a first information report (FIR) against him on April 21. Deshmukh had in the past said that the allegations against him are false.

The central agency has alleged that while serving as the Maharashtra home minister, Deshmukh misused his position, and through assistant police inspector Sachin Vaze – who has now been dismissed and is in Taloja jail for his alleged role in the Antilia explosives scare and Mansukh Hiran murder case – collected ₹4.7 crore from Mumbai’s bars for their “smooth functioning”.

Later, through hawala channels, this money was sent to two brothers in Delhi who operated bogus companies, said the agency. It claimed that at the behest of Deshmukh’s son, Hrishikesh, the two brothers diverted the money as donations to Nagpur-based Shri Sai Shikshan Sansthan, an educational trust controlled by the Deshmukhs.

The anti-money laundering agency also said that Vaze, in his statement to ED said he was called to Deshmukh’s official residence and directed to collect ₹3 lakh from every bar and restaurant in the city. He was also given a list of the establishments

During investigation, ED has identified 24 private entities that are controlled by the Deshmukh family and found that huge sums of money were transacted among them without any rationale.

“From the analysis of the bank accounts of these companies, it is clear that there is no rationale for the transfers, and thus it can be said that these series of transactions were meant for inflating balance sheets and layering of money from one company to other,” ED stated.

The agency arrested Deshmukh’s personal secretary Sanjeev Palande and assistant Kundan Shinde on June 26, claiming that they had handled the money laundering linked to extortions for the leader.

In mid-July, the anti-money laundering agency provisionally attached Deshmukh’s properties, worth ₹4.2 crore. The attached assets include a residential flat in Worli valued at ₹1.54 crore and 25 land parcels of book value ₹2.67 crore at Dhutum village at Uran in the neighbouring Raigad district.

Deshmukh has, however, maintained that the case against him was political witch-hunting. He said the allegations against him, made by former Mumbai police chief Param Bir Singh, cropped up only after the cop was shunted out as the commissioner over his poor handling of the Antilia and the Hiran murder cases.