NEW DELHI:
Supreme Court Thursday said
Enforcement Directorate need not behave like a crook while investigating crooks under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), and that it must operate within the four walls of the rule of law and established procedure.
This oral observation came from a bench of Justices Surya Kant, Ujjal Bhuyan and N K Singh, which was hearing petitions seeking review of SC's 2023 judgment in the Vijay Madanlal Choudhary case where the apex court upheld the broad powers ED enjoyed under PMLA.
Additional solicitor general S V Raju requested the court to examine whether the review petitioners have pointed out even a single "error apparent on the face of the judgment" to cross the "maintainability" threshhold.
Justice Kant chanced upon a miscellaneous application (MA) filed by a person, facing ED probe, seeking to join the review proceedings. "What is this procedure of filing MAs two years after judgment was pronounced? The practice of waiting for judges, who delivered the judgment, to retire to file such an application is deplorable and amounts to forum shopping," he said.
Taking a cue, Raju said these are influential and powerful people with huge money bags and they can resort to any tactics. This triggered Justice Bhuyan, who said, "The crooks under investigation can resort to any tactics, but ED cannot behave like a crook. It has to investigate cases in accordance with law and the procedure laid down."
Justice Bhuyan also flagged the low conviction rate in PMLA cases filed by ED. "I have observed in one of my judgments that ED has registered more than 5,000 ECIRs in the last five years but the rate of conviction is less than 10%. Even the minister admitted this in Parliament," he said.
Raju, however, defended ED. "When an affluent or influential person is proceeded against, he engages a battery of lawyers, who flood the trial court with applications. The trial judge gets mired in disposing of the applications and gets little time to focus on conducting the trial in the main case," he said.
Justice Kant said, "We are equally concerned about ED's image. You must improve your method of investigation and improve the rate of conviction. Why can't the govt set up fast-track special courts to conduct day-to-day trial of PMLA cases? Then the battery of lawyers would know that their delaying tactics would not work," he said.
The bench then drifted towards the increasing possibility of cryptocurrency for money laundering. "We are not saying ban cryptocurrency. But there should be some regulation. Indian currency is also under certain regulations. Why can't crypto be subjected to regulations," it said.
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