ED files FIR against Sharad Pawar in Maharashtra co-op bank scam

NCP chief Sharad Pawar, his nephew and former deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar and others have been summoned by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in a criminal case of money laundering linked to the alleged Rs 25000-crore scam in Maharashtra State Cooperative Bank (MSCB), according to the officials.

They said an Enforcement Case Information Report (ECIR), has been registered by the central agency under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) against all the accused. The case is based on a Mumbai Police FIR that had named the then directors of the bank, former deputy chief minister of the state Ajit Pawar and 70 former functionaries of the cooperative bank. Sharad Pawar, chief of the Nationalist Congress Party and a former CM of Maharashtra, has been named in the ED FIR on the basis of the police FIR, they said. The registration of the case comes ahead of the October 21 Assembly polls in Maharashtra. It is understood that the accused will soon be summoned by the agency to record their statements.

Diliprao Deshmukh, Isharlal Jain, Jayant Patil, Shivaji Rao, Anand Rao Adsul, Rajendra Shingane and Madan Patil are among the accused in the ED case. The ED slapped criminal charges of money laundering on the basis of the Mumbai Police FIR that was filed in August this year, which itself was filed on the basis of a similar complaint by the state economic offences wing (EOW).