ED summons PFI, linked NGO officials in PMLA probe case

The ED has summoned seven office bearers of PFI and an NGO linked to it in connection with a money laundering probe against them, officials said on Tuesday.

They said the office bearers of the Kerala-based Popular Front of India (PFI) and those from Rehab India Foundation have been asked to depose before the investigating officer of the case here on Wednesday.

There was no response to queries sought by PTI in this context from the two organisations.

The summonses have been issued under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), sources said.

The development comes in the backdrop of the Enforcement Directorate (ED) finding that the recent violent protests in Uttar Pradesh and other parts of the country against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act had an alleged "financial link" with PFI but the organisation had termed this as "baseless".

"The Popular Front of India has stated it multiple times that we fully comply with the law of the land and the allegation of Rs 120 crore transferred from the Popular Front's accounts just before the CAA protests is totally baseless and the people who are levelling these allegations should prove these claims," the organisation had said in a statement issued on Monday.

PFI was booked by the ED under the PMLA in 2018.

The agency is also probing the remittances and withdrawal of funds from 9 bank accounts of Rehab India, officials said, apart from a deposit of Rs 20 lakh from Dubai in its accounts.

On its website, Rehab India said it was launched in 2018 and its "aim was to rehabilitate the marginalised section of rural India with a better standard of living by the channelling the building rocks of a just society ie Education, Health, Economic Development and Environment".

Official sources had said on Monday that the federal probe agency has found that at least Rs 1.04 crore were deposited in several bank accounts linked to PFI between December 4 last year and January 6 in various parts of the country.

This was the time when Parliament passed the law to grant citizenship to non-Muslims who were persecuted on religious grounds in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan.

The sources said a total amount of Rs 120 crore, credited at varied times into the bank accounts linked to PFI and few others including Rehab India, are under the ED's scanner.

A National Investigation Agency FIR and charge sheet against the PFI formed the basis for the ED to file the PMLA case.

It is probing PFI's alleged role with respect to suspected terror funding and possible creation of assets by using "tainted" funds.

The PFI was formed in 2006 in Kerala as a successor to the National Democratic Front (NDF).