A Delhi Court on Friday extended three days Enforcement Directorate (ED) remand of Naresh Jain, alleged Hawala dealer, who was arrested in money laundering case for his role in international hawala transactions. Court had earlier granted nine days custody to ED.
Additional Sessions Judge Rajesh Malik, while extended remand stated that "considering the fact that investigation is in progress and documents are to be analysed in the presence of the accused, therefore, three days custody remand of the accused is given to the applicant i.e. till September 14, 2020."
Special Public Prosecutor, Advocate Naveen Kumar Matta representing Enforcement Directorate stated that the custody remand of the accused is necessary for further investigation in order to ascertain the money trail, foreign and Indian properties, foreign bank accounts and Indian bank accounts and information about Shell compes.
"It is stated that the voluminous data needs to be looked into in presence of the accused also," he said.
Matta also stated that during the custodial remand, the voluminous documents have been seized from the office of the accused.
"The employees of the accused have been summoned to confront them with the documents. It is further submitted that the summons have been issued to the relevant witnesses, however, only few of them have attended the applicant's office," he said.
Enforcement Directorates counsel also submitted that further custodial remand of the accused shall be essential to ascertain the quantum of proceeds of crime as investigation in the present case is in progress.
Accused formed Shell Compes and rotated funds approximately to the tune of Rs 96,000 crores in furtherance of the criminal conspiracy to cause loss to the government exchequer by indulging illegal foreign exchange transaction on the basis of forged and fabricated documents, Matta stated.
Senior Advocate Vikram Choudhary and Advocate Naveen Malhotra appeared for accused Naresh Jain and argued that he has already been interrogated by the accused and all the relevant documents have been seized.
"It is submitted that previously also, the accused had appeared before the applicant number of times and participated in the interrogation," he said.
Chaudhary further submitted that ED got the FIR registered with the Economic Offences Wing (EOW) just to usurped its own jurisdiction under Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) and it is highly inappropriate on the part of the applicant to exercise the statutory power in a malafide manner.
Earlier, ED in a release said that it began investigations under PMLA on the basis of FIR filed by Economic Offences Wing (EOW), and others.
"The investigations so far revealed that Jain along with his accomplices allegedly hatched a criminal conspiracy to forge/ fabricate documents in order to cause loss to the government exchequer by indulging in illegal foreign exchange transactions. Documents like identity proof, birth and education certificates, voter IDs, PAN cards and signatures were forged or fabricated to incorporate entities, operating bank accounts, facilitating bogus/over-invoiced/under-invoiced import and export transactions and rotation of the funds through a web of shell compes to cause undue benefit to the parties involved and loss to the government exchequer," ED said.
ED also claimed that Jain allegedly facilitated Hawala operation of Rs 11,800 crores approximately in 114 foreign bank accounts.
"It has also been revealed that 450 shell compes have been used to rotate funds to the tune of approximately Rs 96,000 crores for providing accommodation entries of approximately Rs 18,680 crores to more than 970 beneficiaries," ED said.
( With inputs from ANI )
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