Mithi river desilting: Actor Dino Morea appears before ED

Dino Morea appears before ED

Bollywood actor Dino Morea on Thursday appeared before the Enforcement Directorate (ED) here in connection with a money laundering probe linked to an alleged Rs 65 crore Mithi river desilting scam, officials said.

Morea, who had been summoned by the ED for questioning, reached the federal agency’s office at Ballard Estate in south Mumbai at around 10.30 am, an official said.

The ED on June 6 conducted searches at more than 15 locations in Mumbai, and Kochi in Kerala, including the premises of Dino Morea in Bandra (West) area here, those linked to his brother Santino, some Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) officials, and contractors among others, official sources earlier said.

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The searches were conducted in Kochi as one of the companies that provided desilting equipment to the BMC — Matprop Technical Services Pvt Ltd — is based in this city, they said. The investigation is being conducted under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), the sources had said.

The ED case stems from a Mumbai Police Economic Offences Wing (EOW) FIR filed in May against 13 persons, including contractors and civic officials, for an alleged Rs 65.54 crore scam in tenders awarded from 2017-2023 for desilting of the Mithi river which flows through Mumbai and 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, which was then headed by Eknath Shinde. It was alleged by the police in its complaint that 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 49-year-old actor and his brother were questioned by the Mumbai Police EOW in this case last month also. The Morea brothers, it is understood, were questioned by the police about their alleged links with alleged middleman Ketan Kadam, arrested in the case along with another accused, Jai Joshi, apart from some financial transactions made in a company linked to Santino.

Kadam and Joshi, according to police, were involved in the renting out of ’silt pusher’ machines and multi-purpose amphibious pontoon machines to contractors who were carrying out Mithi river desilting work. In 2021, the ED had attached Morea’s 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.

The plan to desilt the river was planned by the Mumbai civic authorities following the 2005 floods, which brought the city to a grinding halt.