Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan has accused the Opposition and Enforcement Directorate (ED) of making a mountain out of a molehill by exaggerating the one-off Karuvannur Cooperative Bank scam.
At a press conference here on Wednesday, Mr. Vijayan said some forces had a clandestine agenda to besmirch the State cooperative sector. There were 16,000-odd cooperative societies in Kerala. Ninety-eight per cent work flawlessly. “There might be some bad apples in the system. The government has successfully weeded them out,” he said.
The Crime Branch inquiry into the scam resulted in the arrest of 18 people, including the bank’s former secretary and manager. The agency attached their properties. The government has guaranteed that no cooperative society member or depositor will lose their money. They registered 18 FIRs and interviewed 745 witnesses, Mr. Vijayan said.
The Congress and BJP have embarked on a propaganda that CPI(M)-controlled cooperative banks were conduits to launder unaccounted money. They sprung the canard during the days of the demonetisation.
“Now, with an eye on the Lok Sabha elections, the BJP has brought the agency into play. The agency claims that only the Centre could clean the Aegean stables in the cooperative sector. The Congress was playing second fiddle”, Mr. Vijayan said.
