The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has cracked down on illegal granite trading in Telangana's Karimnagar district and has issued notices to several mining companies.
The move has likely left minister Gangula Kamalakar, who also owns granite mining companies, rather dismayed. A total of nine companies, including Kamalakar's family's Swetha Granites, received notices.
The ED decided to serve the notices to the granite company owners on the basis of a complaint that was lodged by state BJP head and Karimnagar MP Bandi Sanjay Kumar and advocates Bethi Mahender Reddy and Gangadhar in 2019.
In their complaint, they had alleged that some companies had been exporting granite from Karimnagar illegally to other countries and that the owners of the companies were also guilty of money laundering.
After conducting a probe into the matter, the ED has now asked all nine company owners to reveal the details of the quantity of granite exported by them.
Reports suggest that before issuing the notices, some ED officials had visited the Kakinada, Krishnapatnam, Chennai and Vizag ports to gather information about the companies' granite exports where they had found that there existed huge differences between the amount of granite that was actually exported and the export quantities in official records. They had submitted a field report to the ED top brass on May 29.