BENGALURU: The arrest of senior Congress leader DK Shivakumar by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) was “imminent” under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, official sources told The New Indian Express.
The speculation around the arrest of Shivakumar and his four associates — Sachin Narayan (business associate), Sunil Kumar Sharma (proprietor of Sharma Transport), Anjaneya Hanumanthaiah (employee at Karnataka Bhawan, New Delhi) and N Rajendran (a former state government employee), has been doing the rounds after the ED had registered a case against them under the PMLA in September 2018. The case was based on the chargesheet, which was filed by the Income Tax Department, Karnataka & Goa against Shivakumar and his four associates in early 2018 before a Special Court for Economic Offences (SCEO) in Bengaluru.
The Congress had protested against the leakage of investigation material to the BJP and had questioned on how the BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra had accessed the documents on the alleged underhand dealings of Shivakumar and his associates, which is investigation material and should have been privy only to the Income Tax Department and the ED.
“Patra had presented some documents to the media in Delhi, which according to him, proved that a huge amount of money was being transferred to the AICC office and that he had statements of DK Shivakumar’s driver, who had told the I-T Department, about how money in kilograms was being sent to the AICC. The I-T Department should be held accountable for the alleged leakage of confidential investigation material,” a Congress leader had commented last year soon after the report was leaked.