DMK MP moves Madras High Court seeking direction to ED to register cases against AIADMK leaders

DMK MP R. Girirajan petitions Madras High Court for ED to investigate AIADMK leaders for money laundering linked to corruption cases.

DMK Rajya Sabha member R. Girirajan has filed nine writ petitions before the Madras High Court seeking a direction to the Directorate of Enforcement (ED) to register money laundering cases against AIADMK leaders S.P. Velumani, C. Vijayabaskar, M.R. Vijayabaskar, P. Thangamani, R. Kamaraj, K.P. Anbalagan, and K.C. Veeramani on the basis of corruption cases pending against them.

The petitioner has also sought the registration of Enforcement Case Information Reports (ECIR) for offences under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), 2002, against two others, namely former MLA ‘T. Nagar’ Sathya alias B. Sathyanarayanan and former president of Salem district central cooperative bank R. Elangovan of the AIADMK. He said all of them were facing cases registered by the Directorate of Vigilance and Anti-Corruption (DVAC).

Since all those DVAC cases had been registered under the Prevention of Corruption Act (PCA) of 1988 involving tainted money and they constitute the predicate/scheduled offence for which the ED could book cases under the PMLA, the petitioner insisted that the central agency must necessarily be directed to register individual ECIRs and investigate whether the money involved in all those corruption cases had been laundered.

The illegal gains generated through the corruption cases, booked by the DVAC, clearly fall under the definition of the term ‘proceeds of crime’ as defined under Section 2(1)(u) of the PMLA. And wherever proceeds of crime had been generated from scheduled offences, the ED was empowered to register a ECIR to investigate the offence of money laundering besides tracing, attaching, and confiscating the tainted assets, the petitioner said.

Further, stating that the DVAC uploads all FIRs registered by it on its website to ensure transparency, the petitioner said, the FIRs registered against the AIADMK leaders, too, were available in the public domain and they clearly disclose the alleged commission of offences under the PCA. He also said, the Supreme Court in Y. Balaji versus Karthik Desai (2024) had impressed upon the need for ED to register ECIRs in such cases.

“Acquisition is an activity amounting to money laundering and the illegal gratification acquired by a public servant represents ‘proceeds of crime,’ generated through a criminal activity in respect of a scheduled offence. Therefore, it does not require any expedition, much less a fishing expedition for someone to say that the receipt of bribe money is an act of money laundering,” the Supreme Court had observed.