The High Court of Karnataka has rejected the plea of brother of Srikrishna alias Sriki, who is an accused in a couple of alleged cheating cases related to hacking of crypto exchanges, against the Enforcement Directorate’s (ED) action of stopping him from travelling abroad to report back to his job.
Justice S.G. Pandit passed the order while dismissing the petition filed by Sudarshan R., who is the brother of Srikrishna.
Immigration authorities at the Kempegowda International Airport in Bengaluru on January 13 stopped Mr. Sudarshan from boarding a flight to the Netherlands, where he is employed. He had come to India to see his ailing father and was on his way back to rejoin work when he was stopped at the airport based on the lookout notice issued by the ED.
The court rejected the petition while noticing from the documents produced by the ED that he had not given an explanation on the online transaction of 50,000 pounds, which he received from Srikrishna and transferred it to Hanish Patel, a person residing in the U.K. and owning an entity by the name GCP UK Ltd., in May 2021.
Pointing out from the e-mail communications that Mr. Sudarshan was in the process of securing permanent Dutch residence and Dutch citizenship for settling down in the Netherlands, the ED had said that he may not be available for the investigation again if he is allowed to leave the country even though he is not arraigned as an accused in the case at present.
Though Mr. Sudarshan had claimed that he had cooperated with the ED’s probe, the ED had claimed that his is not fully cooperating as he has not disclosed the passwords and keys of temporary emails that he was using.
“It is for the petitioner to cooperate with investigation and to convince the ED that he has no role to play in the money laundering case registered against his brother and request for withdrawal of LOC issued against him,” the court observed.
Apart from facing allegation of hacking crypto exchanges, Srikrishna is also facing criminal cases for hacking poker websites, and hacking of e-procurement portal of Government of Karnataka and stealing of ₹11.55 crore from the Government portal bank account.
