ED sniffs out Ramdev’s secret transactions

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has claimed to have discovered undisclosed overseas financial transactions by yoga guru Baba Ramdev amounting to $3 lakh.

Considering this as a serious Fema violation, the ED has written to the Reserve Bank of India seeking further information about the yoga guru’s foreign transactions in the UK and Madagascar.

“More than $2 lakh were transferred in London and $80,000 in Madagascar. These transactions were made from India in the recent past. We have asked the RBI to provide us further details, so that we can trace the money trail. We consider this as a serious Fema violation,’’ a senior finance ministry official told DNA. The ED is also issuing a show cause notice to Ramdev.

The agency to check federal money laundering last week wrote to the British authorities in connection with an island owned by the baba’s trust, Patanjali Yoga Peeth.

The ED alongwith the Income-Tax department is scrutinising Ramdev’s business empire that commands 30 companies acquired in the last five years.

According to ministry officials, Sarwan Poddar and his wife Sunita, residents of Scotland, bought Little Cumbrae, an island of about 900 acres for two million pounds and gifted it to Ramdev in 2009. The uninhabited island was donated to Ramdev to establish a yoga and ayurveda retreat centre.

However, the couple defended the transfer claiming that the transfer was according to UK’s land transfer regulations.