The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has begun investigations into what officials believe could develop into a huge case of money laundering and confiscation of property against Dr Amit Kumar.

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has shared with ED sleuths information about Dr Kumar’s assets and bank deposits abroad, which they say will certainly attract provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), 2002.

An ED team from Delhi is in Mumbai at present to get the chronology of a clutch of cases lodged against Kumar (under the name of Santosh Raut) in which he was booked under the Conservation of Foreign Exchange and Prevention of Smuggling Activities.

In the Mumbai cases, Kumar faced allegations of illegally receiving $80,000 abroad from persons on whom illegal kidney transplants were carried out. Dr Kumar spent several months behind the bars in one case where he jumped bail. In 2005, he was rearrested from Delhi in another case and again let off on bail by a Mumbai court.

“He has continued to use the same modus operandi of receiving huge sums of foreign exchange abroad for performing illegal kidney transplants and has amassed sizeable assets. But this time since the violations have been done after the legislation of PMLA, confiscation of property will be relatively easy,” a senior officer said. The possibility of Dr Kumar using hawala channels to move his earnings from illegal kidney transplants from one country to another is also being probed by the ED.