SC criticizes Enforcement Directorate in black money case

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Madhu Putta

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May 12, 2011, 9:02:33 PM5/12/11
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SC criticizes Enforcement Directorate in black money case

Dhananjay Mahapatra, TNN & Agencies | May 12, 2011, 01.58pm IST
 
NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Thursday severely criticized the ED for filing the chargesheet against Pune-based stud farm owner Hasan Ali Khan in a money laundering case without informing the apex court and without getting it vetted by the revenue secretary-headed High Powered Committee, which was set up by the government to monitor the probe into all black money related issues.

The apex court was also anguished that during the last hearing on May 4 when the Enforcement Directorate placed its status report on the investigation in the blackmoney case involving Khan and others it did not make a mention of the charge sheet to be filed on May 6 before a special court in Mumbai. PTI reported.

"You (ED) filed the charge sheet without placing it before the committee you have constituted and we are surprised," a bench comprising justices B Sudershan Reddy and S S Nijjar said.

"We heard the matter on May 4 but there was no mention in the status report that chargesheet was ready to be filed which was filed on May 6. You did not mention this in the status report. There was no mention of the charge sheet. Why it was not mentioned that the charge sheet is to be filed?," the bench asked.

The bench also queried, "Why it was not mentioned that the investigation is complete and the charge sheet will be filed? Two days later we read in newspapers that the charge sheet has been filed."

It said that the status report filed on May 4 had stated that the investigation was still going on.
The bench said it was "surprising" that the charge sheet was not placed before the 10-member high-level committee headed by the revenue secretary.
"We thought that somebody should look into the charge sheet. It should have been put before a committee created by the government," the bench said, according to PTI.
It said the question was about monitoring the probe for which a mechanism was created by the government while opposing the setting up of special investigation team.
"We are surprised that you have suggested the mechanism and created the committee for monitoring," the bench told Solicitor General Gopal Subramanium.
Subramanium agreed that the charge sheet should have been placed before the committee and said corrective measures will be ensured.
The court directed the ED to provide the copy of the over 900-page charge sheet to the petitioners.
The court was hearing a petition filed by eminent jurist Ram Jethmalani and others seeking action for bringing back black money stashed away by Indians in banks abroad.
 
Black money: ED chargesheet against Hasan Ali Khan leaves out politicians he named

Aditi Raja  | Mumbai, May 11, 2011 | 08:45

Hasan Ali Khan.
The Hasan Ali case promised to be India's biggest, most explosive money laundering case.


Instead, it has turned out to be one of the biggest whitewash jobs in the history of the Enforcement Directorate (ED).

In a complete turnaround from what it threatened to do, the ED has gone out of its way to ensure that those named by Hasan Ali - the man who it claimed was India's biggest money launderer, catering to India's rich and powerful - do not even appear in the chargesheet.

The voluminous, 950-page chargesheet - based on which the trial court will actually frame charges against Ali - does not contain the names of any of the major politicians, including several chief ministers, top bureaucrats or industrialists whom ED sources had said Ali had named during his interrogation.
Mail Today had earlier reported that Ali had revealed the names of as many as five former chief ministers alleging that he had laundered money for them.

Three of them were from Maharashtra and two from Andhra Pradesh. The list of those who had routed their ill- gotten wealth through Ali included top bureaucrats from Maharashtra and many film stars, especially from Andhra Pradesh - powerful links which allegedly kept Ali safe for over two decades.

During this period, Ali is said to have accumulated ill-gotten wealth of over Rs 36,000 crore, stashed in safe havens abroad.

But in the chargesheet submitted to the sessions court in Mumbai, the ED, while charging Ali under the Money Laundering and Prevention Act, 2002, has shown that Ali's scam was worth just a few hundred crore rupees.

Instead, the actual crimes with he has been charged largely relate to how the tax cheat had helped illegally sell off the erstwhile Hyderabad Nizam's jewellery.

"This is to be expected. Since these (ED officials) people work under the government you cannot expect them to go and put the names of the politicians. This will happen until they are given freedom and are working under an ombudsman. You put yourself in their place, it is very hard to go against the system," former top policeman Julio Rebeiro said.

While the ED does mention that Ali has multiple accounts in Singapore and Switzerland, it fails to detail the trail of the remaining amount of black money in Ali's account. Instead of money laundering, most of the chargesheet is on the Nizam's jewels, with the ED claiming that Ali had connections with the Nizam's family and was involved in smuggling out and selling the jewellery.

"You talk to our superiors, as to why we couldn't add the names of top politicians and bureaucrats that were told to us. We were told to prepare the chargesheet focusing on Nizam's jewels and the fake passport and dilute everything else," said an ED officer on condition of anonymity.

The chargesheet also doesn't reveal Ali's monetary transactions or links with international arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi and Swiss hotelier Philip Anandraj The probe detailed in the chargesheet accounts only for about Rs 600 crore of the Rs 36,000 crore worth of deals he is supposed to have entered into.

In his interrogation, Ali had revealed information on as much as Rs 1,600 crore of illegal deals - a fact that the ED has also mentioned in its report tabled before the Supreme Court.

However, all that has vanished from the chargesheet.

This is strongly reminiscent of what happened in the Abdul Karim Telgi fake stamp paper case. Back in 2003, Telgi - accused in the ` 43,000 crore fake stamp paper scam - had apparently revealed the names of political biggies, none of which made it to the chargesheet.

Karnataka and Maharashtra politicians - where the scam occurred - were opposed to handing over the investigations to the Special Investigative Team formed by the Bombay High Court. Eventually not a single big political name made it to the chargesheet in that case. Only two lesser known MLAs - one each from Maharashtra and Karnataka - were investigated and arrested.

In Ali's case too, just two politicians - Bihar Congress politician Amalendu Pandey and the Lieutenant Governor of Puducherry, Iqbal Singh, have been questioned so far. They too, do not figure in the chargesheet.

Former Maharashtra DGP Arvind Inamdar, however, held out hope for a fair investigation. " This would not be the end, the court can ask for the investigation papers if they feel that the case has not been investigated properly and the court can well hand over the probe to another agency," he said.

How strong the ED case against Ali actually is can be gauged from the fact that the charges against Ali occupy around 69, pages while the rest is made up by statements from different accused and correspondence, mostly related to Ali's fake passports.

Not much of this is the ED's actual investigative report. Another officer associated with the case said that they were back to square one. " The Supreme Court asked us to investigate. However, we can't swim with our hands tied.

There were hundreds of phone calls asking us to hush up high profile names." Reactions are split along party lines. " Anyone who is in custody can take big names to sensationalise the issue but there is no truth in it," Maharashtra Congress spokesperson Hussain Dalwai said.

The Opposition Shiv Sena's Subhash Desai said: " How can you expect the ED, which works under the Centre, to function independently? This is the same government that declined to reveal the names of those people who have black money abroad to the Supreme Court." The ED's sudden about- turn is bound to benefit Ali. On Tuesday, his lawyer filed a bail plea for his client saying the chargesheet had nothing new.


Regards,

Madhu Putta
Loksatta Australia Volunteer group
 

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