SFIO probes KSIDC over dealings with CM Vijayan's daughter

Thiruvananthapuram, Feb 7 (IANS) A team of senior officials of the Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO) on Wednesday was at the head office of the state-owned Kerala State Industrial Development Corporation (KSIDC) as part of their ongoing probe into the business dealings between Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan’s daughter Veena Vijayan’s IT firm and the Cochin-based mining firm CMRL.

The SFIO team for the past two days was inspecting the records of CMRL. The team is led by Arun Prasad and has prepared an action plan on how to go about their investigation and the present probe is the first phase of it, said sources.

The SFIO was acting on the findings of the preliminary probe by the Registrar of Companies (ROC). Prior to the ROC investigation, this issue was first raised by Congress MLA Mathew Kuzhalnadan on the basis of a media report.

The media report had quoted an Income Tax Department officer as saying that Vijayan’s daughter Veena Vijayan’s IT firm Exalogic had received Rs 1.72 crore from the mining company CMRL, in which the KSIDC has around 13 per cent stake.

The SFIO team arrived at the KSIDC office, as part of the probe.

When the first report of this deal that Veena’s firm was carrying out with CMRL surfaced, Vijayan and the entire top leadership of the CPI(M) trashed the report as politically-motivated and there was nothing wrong in the dealings.

Veena’s IT firm is a single director company (Veena is the sole director) though based in Bengaluru but presently temporarily closed.

Veena’s husband is State Public Works and Tourism Minister P.A.Mohammed Riyas, who is yet to make a statement on the issue.

However, Vijayan broke his silence last week in the Assembly when he said that his hands were clean and that "in the past while his wife was haunted, today his daughter has become the target".