ED arrests Shivakumar

New Delhi: Senior Karnataka Congress leader DK Shivakumar was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate on Tuesday night, after being grilled by the agency for four days in connection with a money-laundering case it is probing against him.

Sources in the know here said that Shivakumar was arrested in a PMLA case, the probe in which was initiated after taking cognizance of a 2017 I-T search operation that resulted in the recovery of Rs 8.5 crore in cash.

Shivakumar was issued a summons in connection with the case just last week on Friday night, asking him to appear before agency officials in Delhi at 1 pm, the following afternoon.

The money-laundering case against Shivakumar is built on a chargesheet filed by the I-T department after searching premises related to him and his associates in 2017.

The I-T department had claimed that their investigation had revealed an alleged unaccounted wealth of over Rs 400 crore allegedly linked to Shivakumar, in addition to recovering Rs 8.5 crore in cash.

The tax authority had also said that I-T sleuths had discovered Shivakumar's alleged links in Delhi and Bengaluru that purportedly allowed him to move unaccounted cash through the country.

However, when the first summons by ED was issued to him, Shivakumar had in a series of tweets said that "although the sudden scheduling by ED is malafide", he would cooperate with the agency. The Congress troubleshooter had also said that the I-T searches based on which the ED is building its case were politically motivated because he had hosted some Congress MLAs from Gujarat at the time.

Similar I-T searches that had revealed documents of alleged payments made by BS Yeddiyurappa, have, however, not yielded in similar action by the ED.