The Enforcement Directorate has arrested liquor businessman Sameer Mahendru for his involvement in the alleged irregularities of tweaking the Delhi excise policy for benefiting a certain liquor cartel and AAP leaders.
His arrest comes a day after the CBI rounded up AAP leader Vijay Nair in the same case in which the agency has pitched Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia as the prime accused, given that he is the minister for the excise department. Nair was remanded to five-day CBI custody by a city court on Tuesday.
A managing director of liquor distributor company Indospirit, Mahendru, arrested after he refused to cooperate during the night-long interrogation at the ED's office here in the national capital, said agency sources.
The ED took over the probe from the CBI. which in an FIR had alleged that Sisodia's "close associates" Amit Arora, director of Buddy Retail Private Limited in Gurugram, Dinesh Arora and Arjun Pandey - were "actively involved in managing and diverting the undue pecuniary advantage collected from liquor licensees" to the accused public servants.
The CBI, in its FIR, had also alleged that Arun Ramchandra Pillai, a liquor businessman from Hyderabad, who is also an accused in the case, would seek monetary benefits from Mahendru for suspected illegal wiring of money to a public servant through Nair. Another accused, Arjun Pandey, had collected somewhere between ₹2 crore to ₹4 crore from Mahendru on Nair's behest, the CBI had stated.
The ED is probing money generated through irregularities committed to formulating and executing the excise policy 2022, which has since been scrapped. Delhi LG Vinai Kumar Saxena had recommended a CBI probe into Delhi excise policy and suspended 11 excise officials owing to their alleged involvement in the case.