The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Thursday informed the special Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) court that it had no objection to let dismissed police officer Sachin Waze become an approver in the money laundering case registered against former state home minister Anil Deshmukh and others.
Waze, the prime accused in the Antilia explosives scare and Mansukh Hiran murder cases, has already turned an approver in the corruption case against the Nationalist Congress Party leader registered by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). The special CBI court granted him conditional pardon on June 1.
On June 9, Waze applied to the PMLA court seeking permission to become an approver and the court sought the ED’s response to his plea.
The agency on Thursday filed its reply, stating that it had no objection to Waze’s request. The special court posted the matter for hearing on July 7.
Waze was first arrested by the National Investigation Agency on March 13, 2021, in the explosives scare and murder cases, and was lodged in Tajola jail. He was arrested by the CBI in the corruption case against Deshmukh on April 4 this year.
The CBI had on April 21, 2021, registered a case against Deshmukh and others, after former Mumbai police commissioner Param Bir Singh on March 20 wrote to chief minister Uddhav Thackeray and others, claiming that the former minister had instructed certain police officers, including Waze, to collect ₹100 crore every month from bars and restaurants.
Subsequent investigation by the ED revealed that Waze had, accordingly, collected a sum of ₹4.70 crore from owners of orchestra bars in the city between December 2020 and January 2021, and handed over the “extorted money” to Deshmukh’s personal assistant Kundan Shinde, also an accused in the case.