The Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO), which is probing a case against Exalogic Solutions, the firm owned by Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan’s daughter Veena Vijayan, on Wednesday began investigating the Kerala State Industrial Development Corporation (KSIDC) headquartered in Thiruvananthapuram.
A three-member team headed by SFIO Deputy Director Arun Prasad raided the KSIDC office on Wednesday morning and inspected documents related to the state-run entity’s transactions. KSIDC, an organisation under the Department of Industries of the Kerala government holds a 13.4 per cent stake in Cochin Minerals and Rutile (CMRL).
The SFIO team conducted inspections at the corporate office of the Cochin Minerals and Rutile Ltd. (CMRL) at Aluva in Kochi on Monday and Tuesday as part of its probe into the alleged payments made by the company to the firm owned by Veena Vijayan, political leaders and others
The financial dealings of the CMRL for the last 10 years were scrutinised by the SFIO probe team.
The Income Tax Interim Settlement Board (ITISB) had found that Rs 1.72 crore was received by Veena Vijayan and her company Exalogic during 2017-20 from the mining company, the CMRL without providing any service to them.
The SFIO inspection is learnt to have gone beyond Exalogic Solutions and Veena to the alleged payments made to various political leaders by the CMRL.
The payments made to political leaders by the CMRL came out earlier from a diary seized by the income tax officials from the company’s office. The ITISB had found CMRL disbursed Rs 135 crore to political leaders and others after 2016.
Meanwhile, the Kerala High Court on Wednesday declined to stay the ongoing SFIO investigation proceedings in the KSIDC. Rejecting the KSIDC plea for stay on the ongoing investigation, Justice Devan Ramachandran asked why the KSIDC was afraid of the investigation. “If you had nothing to hide then why you afraid of the probe should,” the court asked the counsel of the KSIDC.
The court also declined to interfere with the notices directing the KSIDC to produce documents sought by the probe agency.
The case will be heard again on February 12.