With the ongoing Mithi river distilling scam, the enforcement directorate has now summoned at least eight people, including actor Dino Morea and his brother Santino. Along with the Morea brothers, some of the BMC officials have also been summoned by the Enforcement Directorate. The people have been summoned for questioning next week in a money laundering case linked to an alleged Rs 65 crore worth Mithi River desilting “scam”, official sources said on Saturday.
The development of this scenario took place within a 24-hour daylong search operation at 15 different locations by the central agency on Friday.
The summons notices from the Enforcement Directorate came after the federal probe agency on Friday searched more than 15 premises of different people in Mumbai in Maharashtra and Kochi in Kerala.
While addressing the situation, one of the sources said that “Around eight to nine people, including actor Dino Morea, his brother Santino and some Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) officials, have been asked to appear before the agency at the ED office in Mumbai on different dates next week,” a source said.
Their statements will be recorded under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) once they depose.”
Dino Morea`s house in the Bandra (West) area, apart from premises linked to his brother and those of BMC officials and contractors, was searched by the ED on Friday.
The ED case stems from a Mumbai Police economic offences wing (EOW) FIR filed in May against 13 people. The initial probe by EOW during their investigation put up a question mark for contractors and civic officials for an alleged Rs 65.54 crore scam in the tenders awarded from 2017 to 2023 for desilting of the Mithi River. The Mithi River is a water body which flows through Mumbai and acts as a stormwater drainage channel for the metro city.
However, it has also come to light that the Uddhav Thackeray-led undivided Shiv Sena controlled the cash-rich BMC from 1997 until the party`s split in 2022. It was just after the expiry of the general body in 2022; the civic body was controlled by the state government, which was then headed by Eknath Shinde.
The police stated in their case that BMC officials structured the tender for the desilting contract so that it favoured a specific supplier of machinery and that the contractors generated fake claims for transporting the sludge outside of Mumbai.
This is the reason why Dino Morea and his brother Santino were questioned by the Mumbai Police EOW about this case last month. While the police and the Mumbai Police’s EOW questioned the 49-year-old actor twice, ED will now further ask questions about the alleged scam.
However, the incident is not the first time that actor Dino Morea has been put under question by the investigation agencies. Earlier, in 2021, the ED had attached his assets as part of a money laundering investigation linked to an alleged bank fraud case against Gujarat-based pharmaceutical company Sterling Biotech and its promoters.
