New Delhi: The Delhi High Court Wednesday issued notice to the Enforcement Directorate (ED) on the plea of Karnataka Congress President DK Shivakumar challenging the probe into the money laundering case against him.
A division bench of Justice Mukta Gupta and Justice Anish Dayal has given the ED time till December 15 to respond to the plea. However, the court has not passed any order staying "coercive action" against Shivkumar as he has not moved the application for the same.
Shivakumar approached the court arguing that the ED was re-investigating the same offence it had already investigated in the case registered against him in 2018. The plea stated that the ECIR lodged by the ED in 2020 was based on the same set of facts which have been investigated by the agency in a previous ECIR of 2018.
The predicate offence in the first ECIR was Section 120B IPC and the allegations were that the petitioner in abuse of his official position conspired with others to launder illegal money acquired during the period he served as the Minister and MLA in the State of Karnataka. The predicate offence in the 2nd ECIR alleges the acquisition of assets by the petitioner during the period between 2013 to 2018 disproportionate to his known sources of income. This clearly shows that the investigation under the PMLA offence is identical in both cases,” the plea states.
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The ED had sought the petitioner's custody mainly to probe the issue related to the increase in the assets of the petitioner when he served as a minister and MLA in the state. The petition also challenged Section 13 of the Prevention of Money Laundering (Amendment) Act, 2009, which included Section 13 of the Prevention of Corruption Act (PC Act) in the list of offences under PMLA.
Section 13 of the PC Act deals with criminal misconduct by a public servant. It penalizes a public servant for using his public office, misusing property or owning property disproportionate to his known sources of income.
Senior advocate Kapil Sibal, appearing for Shivakumar, argued that Section 13 of the PC Act raises a very compelling question, as once it is concluded that the property is disproportionate to income, money laundering cannot take place. Sibal submitted, "Once it is found in the offence that money obtained by illegal means has been spent in disproportionate assets, no further offence of money laundering can be made out." The court will hear the matter on December 15.
