The Vigilance and Anti-Corruption Bureau (VACB), Ernakulam unit, has claimed to have uncovered an alleged shell company in Thane, Maharashtra, in connection with the corruption case in Kerala in which three persons were arrested on the charge of attempting to take a bribe of ₹2 crore from a businessman to allegedly get him off the hook of the Enforcement Directorate (ED).

The case had taken a dramatic turn after it emerged that the VACB had arraigned an officer of the ED Kochi unit as the key accused. The VACB has so far arrested Wilson Varghese, 36, of Thammanam, Mukesh Kumar, 55, of Rajasthan, and Ranjith Warrier, a Kochi-based chartered accountant. The VACB suspects that all the three have served as intermediaries for collecting pay-offs from people facing potential investigation by the enforcement agency.

Shekhar Kumar, assistant director of the Kochi unit of the ED is under the scanner of the VACB.

The VACB sources said they were verifying whether there are such shell companies were involved in the case.

Incidentally, Wilson, during the interrogation, had reportedly told VACB that the third accused, Mukesh, had given him the account details of a bank account in Thane to which the businessman had transferred ₹50,000.

The case was registered on a complaint by a Kollam-based businessman who runs a cashew export-import firm. According to the VACB, the businessman was summoned to the Kochi unit of the ED in 2024 on the grounds that his firm’s turnover was very high and that accounts had been forged to mask money laundering. Shortly thereafter, the second accused, Wilson, contacted the businessman with an offer to sort out his ED trouble by paying ₹2 crore to the first accused, stated the remand report.

Wilson asked the businessman for ₹2 lakh in liquid cash to be handed over in person to the first accused on May 15, 2025. Following this, the businessman lodged a complaint with the VACB. The enforcement agency registered a case after pre-verification and set a trap for Wilson when he turned up to collect the marked currency notes worth ₹2 lakh from the businessman on May 16. During his interrogation, Wilson claimed that he was just a middleman and named the third accused, Mukesh, and claimed that he had come to collect the money at his instance., according to the remand report.