Kochi: The Directorate of Enforcement (ED) on Monday filed its final charge-sheet in the Karuvannur Coop Bank fraud case, naming the CPM, three former district secretaries of the party as accused.

Investigation officer Nirmal Kumar Mosha has submitted the charge-sheet at the PMLA Court at Kaloor, including 28 people as newly accused. Among them are former CPM Thrissur district secretaries AC Moideen and MM Varghese and MP K Radhakrishnan. With this, the total number of accused in the case has grown to 83.

The ED said the accused had amassed ₹180 crore from the fraud. The anti-money laundering agency has seized ₹128 crore worth of assets from the accused.

According to the charge-sheet, CPM is accused of interfering in the cooperative bank's operations and assisting the accused in fraudulently obtaining loans. ED also claimed that the party knowingly shared the money fraudulently obtained by the accused, possessed the money with the intention of using it in the future, and subsequently used the funds to purchase a property.

Responding to the development, CPM State Secretary MV Govindan said the ED charges were politically motivated. 

Although there were reports that Radhakrishnan would be made a witness in the case, the charge-sheet has listed him as the 70th accused. Moideen is the 67th accused, while MM Varghese is the 69th accused. 

According to the charge-sheet, Radhakrishnan, who was the CPM Thrissur district secretary from 2016 to 2018, knowingly assisted the accused persons who had taken illegal loans to raise funds for the party from the illegal loan amount.

ED said MLA  Moideen knowingly assisted other accused Roshan Narayanan and Varghese MS in laundering the money by influencing Karuvannur Service Co-operative Bank officials to grant them illegal loans.

Varghese, the party's former Thrissur district secretary, knew about the illegal loan disbursal at the bank. The charge-sheet said he knowingly assisted the accused persons, who had taken out illegal loans, in contributing funds to the CPM from the illegal loan amount.

Madhu Ambalapuram, a Vadakkancheri municipality councilor, AR Peethambaran, MB Raju, and KC Premajan, who work in various party units, are also accused in the case.

Names that did not make it
Important leaders whose names cropped up during the ED's investigation but were not named in the final charge-sheet include Industries Minister P Rajeev, Kerala Bank vice-president MK Kannan, former MPs Paloli Mohammed Kutty, and PK Biju, who was also a member of the CPM's state secretariat, the party's highest decision-making body in Kerala.

In an interim report submitted to the high court on April 11, the central agency accused Rajeev, Paloli Mohammed Kutty, and nine other party leaders of pressuring the cooperative bank employees to give illegal loans. 

Biju, who was also the CPM state secretariat member, and M K Kannan were questioned multiple times by ED in 2023 and 2024.