Griezmann to stay, confirms Atletico CEO
Madrid: Atletico Madrid CEO Miguel Angel Gil Marin said their star forward Antoine Griezmann will stay with the club and it is impossible for the Frenchman to leave the side before summer.
The 26-year-old, who extended his contract with the Spanish club, has been linked with a move to English football giants Manchester United since the previous season.
"It is impossible that he will leave this team before the summer," Gil Marin was quoted as saying by Sky Sports on Thursday.
"Last summer we made a great effort well beyond the club's possibilities and we will do it once again next summer.
"We have struggled to join together these two players (Griezmann and Diego Costa) and I think it will be very good for the two to compete together. It will be very good for Atletico and it will be good for the coaches. Until July 1, his (buyout) clause is €200m ($239 m)," he added.
Gil Marin also said the club has no intentions to sell Griezmann at any point of time as he is one of their marquee players.
"Atletico do not want to sell him, not now, nor in the summer. For us he is a very important player, who has grown a lot with us and we have grown with him. Our intention is to continue growing together. I would love him to continue," Gil Marin concluded.
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Kerala: ED files money laundering case in Sabarimala gold loss case
Thiruvananthapuram/New Delhi (PTI): The Enforcement Directorate on Friday filed a money laundering case in the Sabarimala gold loss case in Kerala, official sources said.
The federal probe agency's Kochi zonal office has registered an Enforcement Case Information Report (ECIR), an ED equivalent of a police FIR, under various sections of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), they said.
The politically sensitive case is already being investigated by a state special investigation team (SIT) under the supervision of the Kerala High Court.
In December, the high court had allowed the ED to undertake an independent investigation into the case after it dismissed objections raised by the SIT against sharing the case information with the central agency.
The SIT is probing two cases related to the gold loss incident and has arrested 11 people so far. The latest to be arrested by the SIT was Kandararu Rajeevaru, the chief priest of the Lord Ayyappa temple.
The other prominent persons arrested in the case by the SIT are Bengaluru-based businessman and prime accused Unnikrishnan Potty and former Travancore Devaswom Board president A Padmakumar.
The ED is expected to soon look for more evidence, question the accused, and it may also go on to attach certain assets of those involved if it finds that they generated "proceeds of crime", according to the officials.
The probe is related to a series of irregularities, including official misconduct, administrative lapses and a criminal conspiracy to misappropriate the gold from the various artefacts of the Lord Ayyappa shrine.
The investigation by the SIT, and now by the ED, is related to the loss of gold from the gold-cladded copper plates of the Dwarapalaka (guardian deity) idols and the door frames of the Sreekovil (sanctum sanctorum) of the temple.
The SIT has informed the High Court that its probe found "a series of serious official misconduct and administrative lapses on the part of the Devaswom officials right from the initial correspondence till the handing over of the door frame plates, connected plates, Dwarapalaka plates and pillar plates to Unnikrishnan Potty without proper authorisation".
It further said in its statement that Govardhan, Pankaj Bhandari, the CEO of Chennai-based Smart Creations, which carried out the electroplating of the artefacts from the temple, Potty and the other accused hatched a criminal conspiracy with malicious intention to misappropriate the gold cladded on the copper plates in and around the shrine.
"It is found during the investigation that all these criminal activities were part of a large conspiracy and an organised crime committed by the accused persons.
"They had a larger plan to dismantle other gold-clad items on the Sabarimala Sreekovil and to extract the gold from them for misappropriation," it said.
