Thrissur/Kochi: The Income Tax (IT) Department on Saturday froze the CPM's Thrissur district committee's bank account following a raid at the Bank of India's branch on Friday. The account has an amount of Rs 4.80 crore. Rs 1 crore was withdrawn from the account this month.
The I-T department raided the Thrissur branch of the public sector bank at M G Road after it was noticed that the CPM district committee had withdrawn large amounts of money from it during the last few months.
When the IT Department found that the CPM had not disclosed these withdrawals in the audit report submitted by it, officials questioned M M Varghese, the Thrissur district secretary of the party and a member of the state committee, at the Enforcement Directorate (ED) office in Kochi on Friday.
The interrogation lasted till 9.30 pm and officials reportedly seized Varghese’s phone. The raid at the bank continued till around midnight.
IT officials reached the ED office to take the statement directly from Varghese. The IT Department had discovered withdrawals amounting to Rs 3-5 crore from the district committee’s account in the public sector bank and that the account still had a big balance.
Earlier, during its investigation into the illegal money trail in the Karuvannur Cooperative Bank scam, the ED had found that unaccounted transactions had taken place in around 25 bank accounts which were operated by various area committees of the CPM. Subsequently, the probe was extended to the bank accounts of the Thrissur district committee. Currently, the investigation is focusing on identifying the persons who withdrew large amounts from the M G Road branch some months ago, source of the money and the beneficiaries.
Even though the bank account of the district committee at the M G Road branch is not a secret account, the reasons behind hiding some big transactions from it in the audit report attracted the attention of the IT Department.
Meanwhile, the CPM district committee and the state committee claimed that the party’s bank account details were transparent, and that the IT Department and Election Commission were apprised of all the transactions.
