Intensifying his attack on Pinarayi Vijayan in the Exalogic case, Leader of the Opposition (LoP) in the Kerala Assembly VD Satheesan posed five questions to the Kerala chief minister.
At a press conference in Kochi on Tuesday on the sidelines of the Congress party’s interaction with the public as part of its ‘Samaragni’ protest march, VD Satheesan asked Pinarayi Vijayan whether a covert understanding between the BJP and the CPI-M helped him delay an investigation into the suspicious transactions involving the company owned by his daughter by the Enforcement Directorate ED).
The senior Congress leader said the ED failed to probe the allegations for three years, going by the report submitted by the Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO) before the Karnataka High Court in the case related to the alleged illegal transactions involving Exalogic, the company owned by the chief minister’s daughter Veena Vijayan, and the Cochin Minerals and Rutiles Ltd (CMRL) at Aluva in Kochi.
The ED reportedly scrutinised the illegal transactions just before the Assembly elections in 2021, he said. Satheesan added that this is a question to which the state leadership of the BJP should also respond.
He recalled that the chief minister had earlier stated in the Kerala Assembly that his daughter’s firm was under the scanner of agencies. Pointing out this, Satheesan asked whether CM Vijayan is ready to divulge the details of the probe and the names of the agencies involved in it.
The Opposition leader also asked the Chief Minister to reveal the names of other firms that had given undue benefits to his daughter’s company. The chief minister should make it clear whether these firms received any tax sops from the government, he said.
Satheesan further asked whether Pinarayi Vijayan is ready to explain the findings that only a portion of the loans extended by a non-banking finance company affiliated to the CMRL to his daughter’s firm had reached the official account of the company. “Where did the rest of the money go?” he asked.
The renewed attack comes a day after Veena Vijayan(Veena T), Pinarayi Vijayan’s daughter and the director of the Bengaluru-based IT firm Exalogc, appeared before the Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO) in Chennai to give a statement regarding the ongoing investigation into financial irregularities of her firm.