Thiruvanathapuram: The Kerala government is all set to hand over to the Enforcement Directorate (ED) all documents connected with its mega projects, including the Kerala Fibre Optic Network Project (K-FON), which were monitored by M Sivasankar while being the principal secretary to the chief minister.
The Information Technology Department had issued an order entrusting its under-secretary N C Santhosh and section officer Mathew John with the responsibility of carrying the documents to the ED office and handing them over to officials concerned. As per the order, the documents were to be handed over to the ED last Saturday.
However, the visit was postponed after officials got a direction from above to seek legal opinion before handing over the documents to the ED. Interestingly, the government deployed officials for handing over the documents even while maintaining that it would counter the ED move.
The ED had given a letter to the government seeking details of K-FON, Kochi SmartCity, Taurus DownTown and E-Mobility projects on October 31. The central agency is probing whether any money laundering or real estate transactions had taken place under the cover of these mega projects.
Sivasankar is currently in the custody of ED for suspected money laundering in a bid to help a gold smuggling racket.
(Taurus DownTown is an ambitious real estate initiative and the e-mobility project envisages the roll-out of a million electric vehicles. The Kochi SmartCity is an integrated knowledge-based private IT township.)
Sivasankar's US visit too under scanner
The US visit by a Sivasankar-led team two years ago purportedly to attract IT investments might also come within the purview of the ongoing investigations. Various IT companies had sponsored the investors meet held in Boston, Seattle and San Francisco. Of these, the meet at Boston was sponsored by Taurus Downtown, the project promoters Taurus Investment Holdings.
