Kochi: M Sivasankar, former principal secretary to Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, is the kingpin of the sensational diplomatic baggage gold smuggling, the Enforcement Directorate probing the money trail of the shady deals says in its additional chargesheet.
The ED submitted the chargesheet to the special court in Kochi on Thursday. On Tuesday, it will be 60 days since Sivasankar was arrested and the suspended IAS officer will be eligible for natural bail if the investigation agency did not submit the chargesheet before that.
The chargesheet has over 1,000 pages including evidence and other documents, sources said.
The ED's stance is that they found evidence of Sivasankar's illegal financial deals during the probe conducted after filing the first chargesheet.
The ED's finding is that the smuggling of gold was facilitated by Sivasankar and a group of people in the chief minister's office. The investigators also believe that the gold recovered from a locker of Swapna Suresh, one of the main accused, was the kickback received by Sivasankar in a project relating to the government's ambitious Life Mission housing project.
Sivasankar was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate on October 29 in the gold smuggling case.
Later, he was arrested by the Customs Department also.
The Customs had arrested P S Sarith, a former employee of the UAE Consulate here, on July 5 for allegedly smuggling gold in diplomatic baggage addressed to the Consulate. Swapna, who was also an ex-employee of the Consulate, and her associate Sandeep Nair were also arrested by the National Investigation Agency from Bengaluru.
Vijayan removed Sivasankar as his Principal Secretary, and then as the IT Secretary after it surfaced that Swapna and Sivasankar were allegedly close friends.
Vijayan has all along said that he had no clue of what was happening, but the opposition Congress and the BJP have alleged that he had knowledge over everything and is now scared that the probe may enter his office.
Vijayan's additional private secretary C M Raveendran has also been questioned by the ED.
