The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Wednesday informed that it has frozen bank accounts of Popular Front of India (PFI), an extremist organisation. The agency has frozen the accounts in connection with a money laundering probe against the PFI.
In a tweet, the ED said that it has provisionally attached bank accounts of Popular Front of India and Rehab India Foundation having collective balance of Rs. 68,62,081 under PMLA, 2002
The ED had registered a case against PFI on the basis of cases filed by the state police and the NIA.
Working on those cases, the ED has found that various members of the organisation had used proceeds of crime to fund several projects including the Munnar Valley Project and bar in Middle East.
The central agency has said that since these bank accounts have proceeds of crime, it has frozen them under the provisions of Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).
Earlier, the ED had arrested some PFI workers and attached some properties in the case.
The ED had filed the case in 2018. In 2020, the agency carried out raids at several locations across nine states purportedly linked to the PFI.
The same year, the UP government of Yogi Adityanath called for a ban on PFI. The BJP government alleged that the organisation, along with its political front – the Social Democratic Party of India – had masterminded and financed the protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and the National Register of Citizens (NRC).
The agency had then in a tweet said that it was probing financial links between the PFI and Bhim Army ‘on the basis of credible evidence recovered from senior PFI officials’.
