The Enforcement Directorate on Friday carried out searches at 15 locations in Maharashtra and Kerala, including at Mumbai residence of Bollywood actor Dino Morea, premises of 13 officials of BMC, contractors and middlemen, to probe money laundering into approximately ₹65 crore-worth Mithi river desilting scam.
The premises of persons chosen for carrying out searches figure as accused in the First Information Report registered by the Mumbai Police’s Economic Offences Wing (EOW). The Bandra (West) residence of Morea, questioned twice by the EOW, and premises of his brother Santino and Matprop Technical Services Pvt Ltd, which provided machinery for desilting, in Kochi were searched by the agency sleuths, sources said.
ED probe
The ED probe is being conducted under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) to unravel proceeds of crime committed in tenders awarded from 2017-2023 for desilting of the Mithi river flowing through Mumbai. It acts as a stormwater drainage channel for the metro city.
The Uddhav Thackeray-led undivided Shiv Sena controlled the cash-rich BMC from 1997 till the party’s split in 2022. After the expiry of the general body in 2022, the civic body was controlled by the State government, headed by the Eknath Shinde faction of Shiv Sena. Shinde was CM before assembly polls and is now Deputy CM of Maharashtra.
The Mumbai Police in its complaint alleged that the BMC officials tailored the tender for the desilting contract in such a way that it benefited a particular supplier of machinery, and the contractors reportedly generated fraudulent bills for transporting the sludge out of Mumbai.
The Morea brothers is believed to have been grilled by the EOW cops for their alleged links with suspected middleman Ketan Kadam.
Middleman Kadam along with another accused, Jai Joshi, are suspected to have made some financial transactions in a company linked to Santino.
Morea had also surfaced in another case of the ED. In 2021, his assets were attached as part of a money laundering investigation linked to an alleged bank fraud case against Gujarat-based pharmaceutical company Sterling Biotech and its promoters.