Rs 18,000 cr returned to banks from Mallya, Nirav & Choksi: Centre to SC
Darpan News Desk IANS, 23 Feb, 2022 12:50 PM
New Delhi, Feb 23 (IANS) Solicitor General Tushar Mehta on Wednesday informed the Supreme Court that Rs 18,000 crore have been returned to the banks in the case of Vijay Mallya, Nirav Modi, and Mehul Choksi.
Mehta, representing the Centre, submitted before a bench headed by Justice A.M. Khanwilkar that the total proceeds of crimes in the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) cases pending before the top court amounts to Rs 67,000 crore.
He further added that as on date 4,700 cases are being investigated by the Directorate of Enforcement and the number of the cases taken up for investigation each year in the last 5 years varies from 111 cases in 2015-16 to 981 in 2020-21. Mehta submitted before the bench that Rs 18,000 crore have been returned to the banks in the case of Vijay Mallya, Nirav Modi and Mehul Choksi.
The top court is hearing a clutch of petitions, challenging the wide scope of powers available to the directorate of enforcement (ED) for search, seizure, investigation, and attachment of proceeds of crime under the law.
Mehta submitted before the bench, also comprising Justices Dinesh Maheshwari and C.T. Ravikumar, that during the last five years (2016-17 to 2020-21), only 2,086 cases were taken up for investigation under the PMLA out of registration of FIR of approximately 33 lakh for predicate offences by the police and other enforcement agencies.
He added, "very small number of cases are being taken up for investigation under the PMLA as compared to annual registration of the cases under the Money Laundering Act in the UK (7,900), the US (1,532), China (4,691), Austria (1,036), Hongkong (1,823), Belgium (1,862) and Russia (2,764)".
Mehta emphasized that the measures against money-laundering have clearly left embryo of drug or terrorism related offences and moved beyond the same. "Further, the efforts against money laundering have consistently advocated to include the widest range of predicate offences in the domestic laws," he added.
Over the past few weeks, a battery of senior advocates, including Kapil Sibal, Abhishek Manu Singhvi, Mukul Rohatgi, Sidharth Luthra, Amit Desai, and others have made submissions before the top court on various aspects related to potential misuse of PMLA provisions introduced by way of amendments to the Act.
The law has been criticised on various aspects: stringent bail conditions, non-communication of grounds of arrest, arrest of persons without supply of ECIR (akin to FIR), broad definitions of money laundering and proceeds of crime, and statements given by accused during investigation made admissible as evidence during trial.
The accused were identified as Mohit Sharma, Rishab Jaitley, Aman Gupta, Sachin Chhabra, Manav, Deepak Agarwal, Saurabh Chabbras and Sachin, all residents of Delhi.
In Punjab, it has not been very long since Bhagwant Mann was projected as the chief ministerial candidate by the Aam Aadmi Party. The Congress announced Charanjit Singh Channi as the CM face just recently.
Suneel Narayan, a 34-year-old finance professional from Bengaluru had, in 2018, registered himself as a potential blood stem cell donor with non-profit organization DKMS BMST Foundation India, dedicated to the fight against blood cancer and blood disorders, such as Thalassemia and Aplastic anaemia.
The six companies and their directors were charged with conspiring with a company that provides telephone services over the internet, E Sampark, and its director, Guarav Gupta, "to forward tens of millions of scam calls to American consumers".
Ten of the arrested persons have been identified as Neeraj Kumar, Amir, Sandhya, Neeta Rawat, Muskaan, Harpreet Kaur, Nisha, Jaya and Deepika Moni, all residents of Delhi, and Sonu, a resident of Haryana.
Punjab BJP chief Ashwani Sharma said the alliance government will set up a special task force to probe the sacrilege incidents and fast-track courts to try such cases.
