Kerala:Bineesh arrested, Sivashankar remanded in ED custody

A day after the arrest of Kerala chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan’s former secretary M Sivasankar in a money laundering case, the ruling CPI(M) suffered another setback on Thursday after the Enforcement Directorate arrested party secretary Kodiyeri Balakrishnan’s son Bineesh Kodiyeri in a narcotics case. Summoned to the ED office in Bengaluru for the second time, he was arrested after he failed to give convincing answers about the alleged funding of the drug racket after a 3-hour questioning, a senior officer said. On the other hand the Kereala Hig Court has rejected the bail appication of former secretary of Kerala CM M Sivasankar, and was remanded in ED custody for a week on Thursday.

Trouble began for Kodiyeri after Bengaluru drug racket accused Anoop Mohammad gave a statement to the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) in which he mentioned his name. He said Bineesh Kodiyeri, second son of Balakrishnan, had helped him a lot in his “business venture”. Later, his name also figured in the call list of Mohammad. A day after the arrest of Kerala chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan’s former secretary M Sivasankar in a money laundering case, the ruling CPI(M) suffered another setback on Thursday after the Enforcement Directorate arrested party secretary Kodiyeri Balakrishnan’s son Bineesh Kodiyeri in a narcotics case.

ED found that two shell companies floated by Kodiyeri, B Capital Solutions and B Capital Forex, were allegedly involved in many shady deals. Floated in 2015, both firms had failed to file tax returns and other formalities and the ED suspects these firms were floated for alleged money laundering and hawala transactions. During investigation the ED also found that Rs 50 lakh made its way into the account of Mohammad in the last six months and suspects that Kodiyeri was one of the financers of the drug cartel. Earlier the ED had frozen transactions of all his properties. CPI (M) general secretary Sitaram Yecury said in Delhi that there was no crisis in the party or the government in Kerala and Kodiyeri Balakrishnan had made his position very clear that the party won’t interfere in the ongoing case.

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