Chandraswami Arrested Again

Another episode was added to the cat and mouse game between the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and godman Chandraswami as he was arrested yesterday for alleged foreign exchange violation of over Rs 9 crore.

After detailed investigations carried out by the ED, sleuths are now trying to verify whether the huge amounts received as donations by the Vishwa Dharmayatan Trust, promoted by Chandraswami, was owned by the godman himself.

Regarding the donations of Rs 78 lakh received from Rakesh Saxena in Bangkok, Rs 30 lakh received from Abdul Insmail of London and Rs 3.5 crore received from Somchai Chawla of Bangkok, those who are stated to have been the donors have clearly stated to the enforcement directorate sleuths that the money had merely been routed through them.

Regarding donations of over Rs 7.5 lakh received from one Akbar Veerji of London, ED has found that the money was received in an NRE account in Canara Bank, R K Puram. Payments are also said to have been made to the Vishwa Dharmayatan Trust (Rs 10 lakh), Prakash Chand Yadav (Rs 30 lakh) and Vikram Singh, a close associate of Chandraswami (Rs 5 lakh).

The money into the New Delhi NRE account, after originating at the Swiss Bank Corporation, St Helier, Jersey Channel Islands was routed to the New Delhi account through the Canara Bank, London.

Upon checking with the London branch of the Canara Bank, ED sleuths were told that Veerji did not hold any account in the bank.

An ED official, R K Rawal, had recently visited Thailand to carry out investigations regarding the donations received by the godman from NRI Somchai Chawla.

ED is also investigating payments over Rs 11 lakh made to Chandraswami by deceased businessman Rajan Pillai, as alleged by his wife Nina Pillai recently.

In addition, there are other cases of alleged foreign exchange irregularities by Chandraswami which are being investigated by the ED sleuths.