Mithi River INR 65 cr scam: How is actor Dino Morea involved?

Dino Morea, on Wednesday, was seen avoiding avoiding cameras as he arrived at the Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of the Mumbai Police, in connection with the Mithi River desilting scam. After he was summoned by EOW, the actor was seen in a white white and blue denim, wearing a cap, and all masked up, when he arrived at the office. This video was shared by ANI which also reported that the actor was questioned for seven hours even on Tuesday.

Dino Morea avoids cameras on his arrival at the EOW of the Mumbai Police

The tweet read, "Actor Dino Morea reaches EOW office in Mumbai. He is being questioned in connection with the Mithi River cleaning scam. Earlier, the officials had questioned Dino Morea for about 7 hours yesterday."

The case centres around the alleged misappropriation of over INR 65 crore, funds originally allocated to clean and maintain Mithi River, a pivotal drainage artery in Mumbai, particularly significant for managing the city’s monsoon floods.

How is Dino Morea involved in the scam?

According to investigative reports, the scam involves exaggerated charges for the rental of dredging and silt-clearing equipment. Allegedly, Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) officials, along with Ketan Kadam and Jay Joshi, overbilled the civic body for machinery sourced from Kochi-based Matprop Technical Services Pvt. Ltd. The EOW believes that this was carried out in complicity with some Matprop employees and officials from the BMC’s Storm Water Drains (SWD) department.

The SIT of officials from the EOW is probing the scam, in which the BMC suffered a wrongful loss of more than INR 50 crore, according to a report in PTI. On May 3, the Mumbai police's special investigation team (SIT) registered a case against 13 persons, including contractors and civic officials, in connection with the scam and initiated searches at the premises of the accused. According to a PTI report, Dino and his brother Santino was linked to the main accused, Ketan Kadam, was unearthed after Mumbai police discovered multiple phone conversations between them.

The actor, on Monday, was also seen yesterday at the teaser launch of Housefull 5 in Mumbai. The other cast members seen at the event included Akshay Kumar, Abhishek Bachchan, Riteish Deshmukh, Nana Patekar, Chunky Pandey, Shreyas Talpade, Jacqueline Fernandez, Sonam Bajwa, Chintrangda Singh, Nargis Fakhri, Fardeen Khan among others. Quite interestingly, the film's teaser was also taken down from YouTube, on grounds of copyright infringement.