Enforcement Directorate has issued fresh summons to Shiv Sena MP Sanjay Raut to appear before it for questioning on Wednesday in a money laundering case linked to alleged irregularities in the re-development of a Mumbai ‘chawl’ and related transactions involving his wife and ‘associates’, officials said.<\/p>\n
The Rajya Sabha MP, who is in the Uddhav Thackeray camp, had denied any wrongdoing and alleged that he was being targeted due to political vendetta.<\/p>\n
Raut has been asked to depose at the agency’s regional office in Mumbai.<\/p>\n
He has been questioned once in this case on July 1 and spent about 10 hours with the investigating officer during which his statement was recorded under the criminal sections of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).<\/p>\n
“I gave full cooperation and answered all their questions. I will appear again if they call me,” Raut had told reporters while exiting.<\/p>\n
He said he was “fearless and undaunted” as he has “not done anything wrong in life”.<\/p>\n
The development comes amid a rebellion in the Shiv Sena with a tussle over party symbol and control of the organisation between former Maharashtra chief minister Uddhav Thackeray on one side and current chief minister Eknath Shinde on the other.<\/p>\n
In April, the ED provisionally attached assets worth over Rs 11.15 crore of Raut’s wife Varsha Raut and two of his associates as part of this investigation.<\/p>\n
The attached properties are in the form of land held by Pravin M Raut, Sanjay Raut’s aide and a former director of Guru Ashish Construction Pvt Ltd, at Palghar, Saphale (town in Palghar) and Padgha (in Thane district).<\/p>\n
These properties also include a flat in Mumbai’s suburb Dadar held by Varsha Raut and eight plots at Kihim beach in Alibaug jointly held by Varsha Raut and Swapna Patkar, wife of Sujit Patkar, a “close associate” of Sanjay Raut, the ED had said.<\/p>\n
The agency wants to question Sanjay Raut to know about his “business and other links” with Pravin Raut and Patkar and also about the property deals involving his wife.<\/p>\n
After arresting Pravin Raut in February, the ED had said he appears to be “acting as a front” or in collusion with some influential person.<\/p>\n
The agency had said during the probe it was revealed he made payments to certain “politically exposed persons”.<\/p>\n
In the Alibaug land deal, apart from the registered value, “cash” payments were made to the sellers, the agency had alleged.<\/p>\n
Pravin Raut was arrested by the ED in a probe linked to a Rs 1,034 crore alleged land scam related to the re-development of the Patra ‘chawl’ in Mumbai’s Goregaon area. He is in judicial custody at present.<\/p>\n
Guru Ashish Construction Pvt Ltd was involved in the re-development of the ‘chawl’ which had 672 tenants in tenements on 47 acres belonging to the Maharashtra Housing Area Development Authority (MHADA), the ED had said earlier.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Enforcement Directorate has issued fresh summons to Shiv Sena MP Sanjay Raut to appear before it for questioning on Wednesday in a money laundering case linked to alleged irregularities in the re-development of a Mumbai ‘chawl’ and related transactions involving his wife and ‘associates’, officials said. The Rajya Sabha MP, who is in the Uddhav […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":338142,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[36],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338605"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=338605"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338605\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":338606,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338605\/revisions\/338606"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/media\/338142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=338605"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=338605"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=338605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}