The Enforcement Directorate (ED) chief on Saturday batted for allowing the agency to independently register and pursue anti-money laundering cases so that its probe is not impacted even if the courts junk the first FIR by any other agency. The ED is in a ‘three-legged race’ and many courts feel that if the case of the scheduled agency is thrown out, “then the ED case automatically fails”, ED chief Karnal Singh said and added this should change as the rules of the game are ‘different’ under the PMlA.
His remarks comes in the backdrop of the courts recently discharging the Maran brothers (Aircel-Maxis 2G spectrum case) and arms dealer Abhishek Verma in separate CBI cases, based on which the ED had registered criminal cases under the Prevention of Money laundering Act (PMlA). The ED can, at present, file a case only on the basis of an FIR by agencies like CBI and cannot take up an anti-money laundering investigation independently.
