New Delhi: In a major relief to Karnataka's Deputy Chief Minister DK Shivakumar, the Supreme Court on Tuesday dismissed a 2018 money laundering case against him. The senior Congress leader was represented by senior advocate Sidharth Luthra and advocate Parmatma Singh before a bench comprising justices Surya Kant and K V Viswanathan.
Shivakumar’s plea, in the apex court, said: “the petitioner is facing illegal proceedings commenced without jurisdiction, in ECIR/HQ/2018 erroneously registered for investigating offence punishable under Section 3 of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002, in as much as, the admitted basis of commencing investigations under PMLA is a criminal complaint filed by Income Tax authorities which alleges criminal conspiracy punishable under Section 120B of IPC...”.
The plea said in the absence of any conspiracy for commission of any scheduled offence, no proceeds of crime as defined in Section 2 (u) can be said to exist and ex facie, Section 3 of PMLA cannot apply.
Shivakumar was arrested by Enforcement Directorate (ED) officials in September 2019 in connection with this case. The Delhi High Court granted him bail the next month. The Congress leader had then accused the BJP of political vendetta.
The case was lodged on a charge sheet filed by the Income Tax Department in 2018 before a special court in Bengaluru on charges of alleged tax evasion and 'hawala' transactions worth crores of rupees. The IT department had accused Shivakumar and his alleged associate S K Sharma of indulging in transactions involving huge amounts of unaccounted money on a regular basis through 'hawala' channels with the help of three other accused.
