The Madras High Court on Friday delivered its verdict in the 2-decade old FERA violation case in which TTV Dinakaran, former AIADMK Rajya Sabha MP and a member of the Sasikala family, was accused of money laundering and benami transactions. The Madras HC has confirmed the penalty of Rs 25 crore imposed on Dinakaran by the Directorate of Enforcement in the 1996 case.
A nephew of Sasikala, Dinakaran came under the scanner of ED officials after huge amounts of cash deposits were made into his bank accounts during the 1991-96 Jayalalithaa regime. The ED had then booked him under the Foreign Exchange Regulation Act (FERA).
TOI recalls that the ED had rejected Dinakaran's claim of being a Singapore citizen and hence being out of ED’s ambit, and found him guilty. “Consequently, a fine of Rs. 25 crore was imposed on him. After an appellate authority too upheld the fine, Dinakaran moved the high court and the matter had been pending since then,” TOI reports.
The TTV brothers –Dinakaran, Sudhakaran and Bhaskaran – are based out of Theni. The TTV brothers were born to Sasikala’s sister Vanithamani. Sudhakaran is the son who was adopted, and later disowned, by Jayalalithaa, whose lavish wedding in 1995 created a major furore.
In his piece in 1995, GC Shekar writes that Dinakaran “first came to notice in 1988 as one of Jayalalitha's permanent hangers - on after the AIADMK split in the wake of MGR's death. In 1990, however, he fell out with Jayalalitha because of his "proximity" to M. Natarajan, Sasilkala's estranged husband, to whom the AIADMK supremo had taken a dislike.”
In 2012, Dinakaran was kicked out of the AIADMK by Jayalalithaa, along with several others of the Sasikala family.
VK Sasikala is now the General Secretary of the AIADMK and several members of her family are known to be helping her with the administration of the party.
Dinakaran is also believed to spend much of his time at the Poes Garden house which used to belong to Jayalalithaa, and was among the first to reach AIADMK office after Sasikala took charge.