Mithi river desilting: ED raids actor Dino Morea, BMC officials and others

Mumbai: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Friday conducted searches at the premises of actor Dino Morea, some BMC officials, and contractors among others, as part of a money laundering investigation linked to an alleged Rs 65 crore worth Mithi river desilting "scam", official sources said.

The raids covered more than 15 premises located in Mumbai in Maharashtra and Kochi in Kerala.

This includes the premises of Dino Morea in the Bandra (West) area of Mumbai, those linked to his brother Santino, Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) officials, contractors and some others, the sources said.

The searches were conducted in Kochi as one of the companies that provided desilting equipment to the BMC -- Matprop Technical Services Pvt Ltd -- is based in this city, they said.

The investigation is being conducted under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), they said.

The ED case stems from a Mumbai Police economic offences wing (EOW) FIR filed in May against 13 people, including contractors and civic officials, for an alleged Rs 65.54 crore scam in the tenders awarded from 2017-2023 for desilting of the Mithi river which flows through Mumbai and acts as a stormwater drainage channel for the metro city.

The Uddhav Thackeray-led undivided Shiv Sena controlled the cash-rich BMC from 1997 till the party's split in 2022. After the expiry of the general body in 2022, the civic body was controlled by the state government, which was then headed by Eknath Shinde.

It was alleged by the police in its complaint that BMC officials tailored the tender for the desilting contract in such a way that it benefited a particular supplier of machinery, and the contractors reportedly generated fraudulent bills for transporting the sludge out of Mumbai.

Morea and his brother were questioned by the Mumbai Police EOW in this case last month. The 49-year-old actor has been questioned twice by police.

The Morea brothers, it is understood, were questioned by the police about their alleged links with alleged middleman Ketan Kadam, arrested in the case along with another accused, Jai Joshi, apart from some financial transactions made in a company linked to Santino.

Kadam and Joshi, according to police, were involved in the renting out of 'silt pusher' machines and multi-purpose amphibious pontoon machines to contractors who were carrying out Mithi river desilting work.

This is the second time that the actor has been in the crosshairs of the ED, as, in 2021, the agency had attached his assets as part of a money laundering investigation linked to an alleged bank fraud case against Gujarat-based pharmaceutical company Sterling Biotech and its promoters.

The plan to desilt the river was planned by the Mumbai civic authorities following the 2005 floods, which brought the city to a grinding halt.