Ranchi: The Enforcement Directorate on Tuesday raided premises linked to IAS officer Vinay Kumar Choubey, some other government officers and a number of liquor businessmen and middlemen in Jharkhand, which is poll-bound, and Chhattisgarh as part of a money laundering investigation into an alleged excise "scam".
Officials said the searches are being undertaken at 15 premises in Ranchi and Raipur after a criminal case was recently registered by the Jharkhand office of the federal probe agency under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).
Teams of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF ) provided security to the ED teams.
The ED took cognisance of a September 7 FIR filed by the Chhattisgarh police anti-corruption bureau (ACB) at Raipur naming Choubey, retired Chhattisgarh IAS officer Anil Tuteja, Anwar Dhebar, the elder brother of Raipur Mayor Aijaz Dhebar, Arunpati Tripathi, an Indian Telecom Service (ITS) officer and special secretary of the Chhattisgarh excise department, and four others.
The premises of 1999-batch Jharkhand cadre IAS officer Choubey, currently the secretary of Jharkhand Panchayati Raj department, joint secretary of excise department of the state Gajendra Singh, liquor traders and linked persons are being searched, they said.