The Appellate Tribunal under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) upheld the Enforcement Directorate’s (ED) attachment of Congress MP Karti Chidambaram’s land and property in Jorbagh in Delhi and seven bank accounts in INX Media bribery case.
According to the Tribunal’s order, the Jorbagh property is worth Rs 16.05 crore and seven bank accounts in the Indian Overseas Bank’s (IOB) Nungambakkam Branch in Chennai is having more than Rs 6.23 crore worth of deposits. Interestingly, six accounts have same value of deposits of Rs 93,51,961 each.
Dismissing the appeal filed by Karti, the Tribunal has ratified ED’s attachment orders, praising the then Investigating Officer Rajeshwar Singh.
Karti argued that the attachment order was bad in law since the ED filed the prosecution complaint in the case against him more than 365 days after the confirmation of attachment.
However, the Bench comprising Members Balesh Kumar and Rajesh Malhotra accepted ED’s contention that the delay fell within the COVID-19 limitation exclusion period as directed by the Supreme Court.
“The enormity of the situation for the Investigating Officer to have completed the investigation during the period of lockdown, when he was not even authorised to visit the witnesses or record their statements needs to be appreciated. In any case, such witnesses could have declined to respond to the summons and tender their statements. The nature of Covid-19 did not rule out threat to life arising from mere human interaction.
The extraordinary circumstances arisen due to Covid-19 would have had an impact on the pace of the investigations being conducted,” the Appellate Tribunal said in the order dated October 29.
The ace Investigating Officer Rajeshwar Singh is currently the BJP’s MLA from Sarojini Nagar, Lucknow, since 2022, leaving the probe agency.
In an order passed on October 10, 2018, the ED had attached Karti’s 21 bank accounts and properties in London, Spain, apart from India, worth book value of Rs 54 crore.
This Provisional Attachment Order (PAO) was upheld by the Adjudicating Authority (AA) on March 29, 2019. This led to the appeal before the Appellate Tribunal.
ED officer Rajeshwar Singh unearthed INX-Media bribery case in 2015, while probing the Aircel-Maxi’s scam raised by BJP leader Subramanian Swamy. The agency attached hard disks of Karti leading to P. Chidambaram family’s properties in 14 countries and 21 foreign bank accounts, leading to the INX-bribery case.
Karti and his father former Finance and Home Minister P Chidambaram, are accused persons in the CBI and ED’s INX Media bribery case. The case was related to taking Rs 15 crore bribe from INX Media owners Indrani Mukerjea and Peter Mukerjea, when they were caught by Income Tax for illegally bringing Rs 305 crore from abroad, while they were allowed only Rs five crore as Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in the TV channel.
Finance Ministry officials Sindhushree Khullar, Anup K Pujari, Prabod Saxena, Rabindra Prasad and Pradeep Kumar Bagg are also charged as accused by CBI along with Mukerjea couples.
Meanwhile, accused and bribe-giver Indrani Mukerjea confessed before the investigators and court and turned as an Approver.
The trials in CBI and ED cases are now in the framing of charges stage. Advocates Zoheb Hossain, Vivek Gurnani and Kanishk Maurya represented ED.