An amount of Rs 18,000 crore has been returned to banks from fugitive tycoons Vijay Mallya, Nirav Modi and Mehul Choksi, the government has told the Supreme Court, a batch of petitions challenging the wide scope of powers given to the Enforcement Directorate listening to. In respect of money laundering cases.
In India, 4,700 PMLA cases are being investigated by the Enforcement Directorate and the total proceeds of offenses pending before the court are Rs 67,000 crore, the Center said.
Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for the Centre, cited statistics to explain how a huge amount is still stuck and is not passing the stage of recovery due to the protection provided by the courts.
“Some people who have cheated thousands of crores are getting the protection of the courts. Till now, Rs 67000 crore has been withheld by the courts for non-punitive action,” he said.
In the past weeks, several senior advocates, including Kapil Sibal, Abhishek Manu Singhvi and Mukul Rohatgi, have made submissions in the Supreme Court pointing out possible misuse of the recent amendments to the Prevention of Money Laundering Act or PMLA.
The law has been criticized on several issues – strict bail conditions, non-communication about grounds of arrest, arrest of persons without supply of ECIR (parallel to First Information Report filed by police), expansion of definition Money laundering, proceeds of crime, and statements made by the accused during investigation were made admissible as evidence during trial.
The Center told a bench of Justices AM Khanwilkar, Dinesh Maheshwari and CT Ravikumar that very few cases are being taken up for investigation under PMLA in India as compared to the situation abroad.
As an example, the Center cited the UK, where 7,900 cases have been registered under the Money Laundering Act in a year, the US (1,532), China (4,691), Austria (1,036), Hong Kong (1,823), Belgium ( 1,862) and Russia (2,764).
In India, the number of cases taken up for investigation every year in the last 5 years varies from 111 cases in 2015-16 to 981 in 2020-21, the Center said. 33 lakh FIRs have been registered for such offenses in the last five years (2016-17 to 2020-21). But only 2,086 cases were taken up for investigation, the Center said.
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