Kochi: The Enforcement Directorate has issued fresh summons for June 17 to Veena T, the daughter of former Kerala chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan, for questioning in a money laundering case, officials said Friday.
She had sought deferment of her first summons for June 12, citing health issues, sources said.
Officials said the central agency has now asked Veena to depose June 17 at the ED zonal office here for questioning and recording of her statement in the money laundering case related to alleged financial transactions between her now-defunct IT solutions company named Exalogic Solutions Pvt Ltd, and a Kerala-based sand mining company Cochin Minerals and Rutile Ltd (CMRL).
CMRL managing director Sasidharan Kartha and other company officials, along with nine others, have also been summoned for questioning on different dates, the officials said earlier.
The premises of Veena, who lives with her father in a Thiruvananthapuram rented house, were raided by the ED recently.
The agency is probing an allegation that CMRL made fraudulent payments worth Rs 2.78 crore to Exalogic Solutions under the guise of ‘IT consultancy services’. Another company named Empower India Capital Investment Private Limited operated by Kartha had also extended loans worth Rs 50 lakh to Exalogic Solutions despite its failure to make timely repayments, the officials said.
They claimed that the CMRL management and Veena generated “proceeds of crime” in this process and that they want to understand the rationale behind these transactions from them.
The PMLA case was filed in March 2024 after the ED took cognisance of a complaint registered by the Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO), the investigation arm of the Ministry of Corporate Affairs, which later filed a prosecution complaint (chargesheet) before an Ernakulam court in April 2025.
The CMRL was caught in the crosshairs of central probe agencies following an Income Tax Department raid in January 2019, which unearthed alleged fake expenses to the tune of Rs 130 crore.
Court documents state that the company “inflated” its expenditure by Rs 133.82 crore by booking “bogus” cash expenses under the heads of ‘transportation’ and ‘sludge handling’ between the financial years 2012-13 and 2018-19, and generated cash that was used to make illegal payments to politicians, parties, media houses and public servants.
The court papers add that CMRL CFO and MD “admitted” before tax authorities that such cash payments were made to ensure smooth business operations, as they faced threats of closure of the business and environmental challenges.
Officials said CMRL “admitted” to making these “fake” expenses before the Income Tax Settlement Commission.
Later, a complaint was made to the SFIO. In its prosecution complaint, the SFIO said that CMRL made fictitious cash expenses worth Rs 182 crore over a span of 15 years to “bribe” various people, and that it paid Rs 91 crore towards transport services to companies owned by the Kartha family.
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