ED starts probe into FIRs by Kolkata cops against its officers

NEW DELHI: The Enforcement Directorate has initiated an investigation based on FIRs registered by Kolkata police against ED officers probing various money laundering cases against politicians and their associates in West Bengal.

Sources said Kolkata police's FIRs were the basis for the ED to register a probe under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, to ascertain if the charges were frivolous and made to derail its probe.

Though the ED probe began soon after Kolkata police registered FIRs, the Calcutta HC had restrained the state police from booking CBI and ED officials investigating cases in the state. On Monday, the SC, stayed the Calcutta HC order, including the instruction not to register FIRs against officials of the central enforcement agencies.

The ED is investigating Trinamool Congress MP Abhishek Banerjee and other leaders of the TMC in multiple cases, including the West Bengal teachers' recruitment scam and the illegal coal mining scam. Banerjee, West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee's nephew, has been questioned multiple times in connection with a coal scam where he and his close associates are facing accusations of laundering 'proceeds of crime' worth Rs 1,300 crore. His wife Rujira was also questioned by the agency. The ED has collected evidence during its over three years of probe in the case, some of which allegedly links Rujira to the laundering of 'proceeds of crime' outside the country.

In the teachers' recruitment scam, the ED had seized Rs 50 crore from the premises linked with a former minister of Mamata Banerjee's cabinet.

The ED has been probing various leads and also attempts by politicians to allegedly misuse the police in derailing its money laundering investigation by lodging FIRs against officials of the central agencies.