The Enforcement Directorate (ED) arrested Vinesh Chandel, co-founder and director of I-PAC, on Monday night on money laundering charges linked to an alleged coal scam in West Bengal.
This arrest comes ten days before the highly-anticipated assembly elections in the state and weeks after the central agency raided Chandel's Delhi property in relation to the charges.
This is not the first time I-PAC has been under the scanner of the ED. In January, Pratik Jain, a director of the political consultancy, was raided by ED officials in Kolkata, sparking a major controversy and a case in the Supreme Court.
According to reports, the ED has linked the case against Chandel to an FIR filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation in 2020, alleging a coal pilferage in Eastern Coalfields Ltd's mines in West Bengal's Kunustoria and Kajora.
The central agency has added that a 'hawala' linked to the coal-smuggling ring helped move tens of crores of rupees to I-PAC.
Chandel has been remanded to 10-day custody of the ED, and TMC's Abhishek Banerjee has also been accused of having links to the coal scam.
