New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Monday junked a plea by the Enforcement Directorate against an order passed by the Bombay High Court, directing the RBI to consider the compounding applications filed by NDTV in a case of alleged FEMA violation.
A bench of Justice Abhay S Oka and Justice Augustine George Masih said the court does not find any error in the order passed by the High Court and added, "no case for interference made out". Compounding under FEMA refers to the process of voluntarily admitting a contravention and seeking redress.
In 2018, the High Court set aside objections raised to the compounding proceedings by the ED, which had earlier flagged the alleged Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA) violations and issued show cause notices to NDTV.
The ED had issued show cause notices in 2015 to the company for allegedly flouting foreign exchange regulations while availing of overseas and foreign direct investment facilities of more than Rs 2,000 crore. NDTV, in 2016, filed an application with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) for compounding of the contraventions alleged in the show cause notices.
The RBI, a year later, told the news organisation that it could not consider its application since the ED had written to it on December 1, 2017, expressing suspicion and making further allegations of money laundering against the company and its subsidiaries in some other cases as well. The news organisation moved the High Court against ED's letter to the RBI.
