The Enforcement Directorate has filed a case in the Life Mission scam, adding Unitac MD Santhosh Eapen to the charge sheet. The case pertains to money laundering using the Life Mission project as a cover. The Directorate will also probe into the dollar smuggling case, where he had converted the commission he received in the Life Mission project into US dollars.
On February 16, the Customs Department had arrested Eapen in connection with the dollar smuggling case, but the latter had quickly come out on bail. The agency had officially recorded his arrest after summoning him for interrogation at the Kochi office. He was the fifth accused in the Life Mission case, and the Customs officials found that Eapen had paid a huge amount of commission to the other accused in dollars to obtain the contract for the Life Mission project.
Meanwhile, Customs and the Enforcement Directorate have entered a small legal tug of war over the confidential statements of Swapna Suresh and P Sarith as recoded by the Customs officials. The latter informed a Kerala Court that the confidential statements of the accused mentioning the names of top leaders in the gold smuggling case should not be given to the ED. The Directorate had filed a petition seeking a copy of these confidential statements.
According to Customs, sharing confidential statements with the ED will “affect the investigation”. The former even requested the Court not to share the statement before filing the charge sheet. The ED’s petition was scheduled for hearing next month by the Additional CJM court.
