Kochi: Bineesh Kodiyeri, son of CPM State Secretary Kodiyeri Balakrishnan, was questioned by the Enforcement Directorate for 11 hours on Wednesday over his alleged links with drug peddler Mohammed Anoop.
The interrogation commenced at 11am on Wednesday after the arrival of P Radhakrishnan, Assistant Director at the ED. Bineesh was allowed to leave office at 10pm.
Anoop was arrested by the Narcotic Control Bureau (NCB) in the Bengaluru drug case, and the gold smuggling case.
Anoop, in his statement to Central Crime Branch, has admitted that he supplied drugs to African students after he arrived in Bengaluru in 2013. He said Bineesh had provided financial assistance to start his restaurant business.
While Bineesh confirmed that Anoop is a close friend, he denied having any knowledge of Anoop's links with the drug mafia. Bineesh said this news was a “shocking surprise”.
According to the investigating team, Anoop had a big role in smuggling drugs including cocaine, LSD, MDMA into Kerala. Apparently, he has close links with several young actors and politicians in the state.
He was arrested on August 28 along with Kannada television star D Anikha and Rijosh Raveendran, a Palakkad resident.
Meanwhile, three companies, started in partnership with Bineesh Kodiyeri, are under scrutiny. Two of them – one based in Kozhikode and the other in Bengaluru – were frozen by the Registrar of Companies for not submitting their annual reports since their inception in 2015.
The third company which Bineesh has links to, UAFX in Thiruvananthapuram, is said to have paid commission to Swapna Suresh, an accused in the Thiruvananthapuram gold smuggling case, for helping it win the visa stamping contract of the UAE Consulate.
The Enforcement Director strongly suspects that these are companies that exist only on paper and are involved in money laundering and foreign exchange transactions. There are indications that the ones arrested in the Bengaluru drug racket were involved in money laundering under the cover of these companies.
After the interrogation, the Enforcement Directorate will ascertain if the case related to the seizure of drugs in Bengaluru has any links with gold smuggling scandal being probed in Kerala.
