Based on report submitted by ED, the PMLA Court in Kochi remand senior bureaucrat Sivasankar in custody for five days.
Retired top bureaucrat M Sivasankar.
When the Enforcement Directorate (ED) filed its petition before the Special PMLA Court in Ernakulam against M Sivasankar, once principal secretary of Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, it revealed startling details of how it believes the senior bureaucrat facilitated kickbacks in what is known as the LIFE Mission project scam.
Sivasankar — who was arrested on Tuesday, 14 February, and was remanded in custody for five days the following day — is the 9th accused in the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) case related to the LIFE Mission project which is being investigated by the ED.
The ED is investigating several allegations levelled against Sivasankar, including that he facilitated the payment of a commission of ₹4.5 crore to middlemen, out of funds received from the UAE Red Crescent to help flood-affected victims in Kerala.
The ED told the court that offences under Section 7, Section 13(2) r/w 13(1)(a) of PC Act, 1988, and 120B of IPC, 1860, being Scheduled Offences under Part-A of the Schedule of PMLA, 2022, the money laundering angle of the same is being investigated by the agency.
The central investigating agency sought custody on the ground that Sivasankar had been evasive during questioning and was not cooperating in the investigation.
To buttress its case, the ED also submitted hitherto unseen personal WhatsApp chats between Sivasankar and Swapna Suresh — a one-time employee of the UAE Consulate in Thiruvananthapuram and a co-accused in the case.
Incidentally, Swapna Suresh is also an accused in the much-talked about gold smuggling case, and was later also an employee of a state government till her arrest in the case.
According to the ED’s remand report, the Livelihood Inclusion Financial Empowerment (LIFE) Mission, the Kerala government’s flagship housing scheme for the poor, signed an MoU with Red Crescent, UAE, to construct residential homes to the flood-affected people in Wadakkanchery Municipality.
“Red Crescent was an international charity organisation taking up humanitarian and social development work throughout the world. Red Crescent, UAE, offered to build flats under the LIFE Mission Project and hence a Memorandum of Undertaking (MOU) was signed on 11.07.2019,” said the ED in its remand report.
The ED informed the court that there were irregularities in the selection of vendors for the execution of the LIFE Mission project.
The report said material evidence like WhatsApp conversations between Sivasankar and Swapna Suresh clearly indicated that the contract was “fixed” in favour of Unitac Builders & Developers, run by Santhosh Eappen.
“When the material evidences were confronted to Smt. Swapna Suresh, she admitted that an upfront commission as bribe was demanded and Unitac Builders & Developers agreed to pay the upfront commission before execution of the project. It was also admitted by Smt Swapna Suresh that this upfront commission was paid by Shri Santhosh Eappen to officials after receiving the amount from Red Crescent,” read the report.
The investigating agency also stated in court that, on the basis of its investigation so far, “It is evident that a huge amount of money, which has been collected for the provision of residential homes to the hapless flood victims of Kerala, was siphoned off as an upfront commission for allocation of the project contract.”
The investigating agency informed the court that, initially, Sivasankar, who retired on January 31, contended that the Kerala government didn’t have any role in giving the contract to Unitac Builders & Developers.
But when the investigating agency confronted him with the WhatsApp chats between him and Swapna Suresh, the senior bureaucrat became evasive and “had a non-cooperative approach”.
“All the facts he has been evasive about need to be investigated and confronted with Shri Sivasankar M which requires custodial interrogation,” the ED said in court.
ED submitted the WhatsApp conversations between Sivasankar and Swapna Suresh, conducted a day before the alleged bribe was paid. In the conversation, Sivasankar is seen warning Suresh to be careful and that she could be blamed if anything were to go awry in the deal.
“Don’t get too involved, Somehow I get the feel that they will put the blame, if something goes wrong, on ur head and tell MOFA that is why you left (sic),” reads the message.
Yet another conversation quoted in the report contended that on 31 July, 2017, Sivasankar told Swapna Suresh that the chief minister had asked him to get a job for her.
“CM had asked me to get u a job. But that will be low profile though the salary will be double,” the chat says.
It may be noted that after Swapna Suresh got embroiled in the gold smuggling through diplomatic channels case, she was appointed as a junior consultant at the the Space Park, which comes under the Kerala State Information Technology Infrastructure Ltd (KSITIL).
The ruling LDF government had earlier denied that the chief minister was privy to the appointment of Swapna Suresh at the Space Park project.
Swapna Suresh was sacked from the project after she was arrested in the gold smuggling case.
At the time, the blame for her appointment was pinned on Sivasankar, who was principal secretary to the chief minister from 2016 to mid-2020, during which the smuggling scandal surfaced.
On the basis of these WhatsApp chats, ED told the court that there was evidently a larger nexus involving officials in the allocation of the contract and requested the court to remand Sivasankar for a period of 10 days.
