‘He yelled, hurled threats & was non-cooperative’

Chennai: Hours after chief minister M K Stalin faulted the Enforcement Directorate (ED) for arresting minister V Senthil Balaji despite the latter offering his fullest cooperation, the ED told the remanding court that the minister "behaved in an intimidating manner, shouted and yelled at the officer that he was a sitting minister of the state".
Requesting custody of the minister, the ED told the principal sessions court that Senthil Balaji refused to sign and receive the summonses. "When we tried to record his statement, Senthil Balaji did not respond to any of the questions and was completely non-cooperative during the summons proceedings," it told principal judge S Alli.
The ED also stated that an analysis of Senthil Balaji's bank statement revealed that there had been cash deposits of 1.34 crore in his bank accounts and 29.55 lakh in his wife S Meghala's account. "These cash deposits are huge compared to their income disclosed in the income tax returns filed by them," the ED said. According to the central agency, Senthil Balaji, his brother Ashok Kumar and the former's personal assistant B Shanmugam did not appear before the investigation officers despite several summonses.
ED registered a case in July 2021, against Senthil Balaji and others for money laundering, based on the FIR registered by the Central Crime Branch, Greater Chennai Police. It said that following the Supreme Court's direction on May 16, 2023, the unmarked documents and forensic reports with the special court for cases against MPs and MLAs were analysed, after which the relationship among key accused Senthil Balaji and his PAs was established. Incriminating documents related to recruitment of drivers, conductors, junior tradesman, junior engineers, assistant engineers were found.
It is the CCB case that during his tenure as transport minister from 2014 to 205 in the then AIADMK government, Senthil Balaji his then personal assistants B Shanmugam and M Karthikeyan, besides his brother R V Ashok Kumar, had conspired with the then managing directors of State Transport Undertakings (STU) and other officers of transport corporations to obtain illegal gratification from candidates to recruit them as drivers, conductors, junior tradesmen (JTM), junior assistants, junior engineer (JE) and assistant engineer (AE). They fraudulently manipulated the marks secured by the candidates and approved their appointment orders, said ED.