The Andhra Pradesh High Court granted bail to the accused, Suresh Goyal with regard to arrest under Prevention of Money Laundering Act for diversion of Andhra Pradesh State Skill Development Corporation, Andhra Pradesh (‘APSSDC’) fund.
According to the said FIR, APSSDC entered into a Memorandum of Association (MoA) with SIEMENS (combination of SISW and DTSPL) , to impart Hi-end technology training to the trainers of APSSDC, pursuant to which DTSPL had to provide training software development
Since Sections 120B, 418, 420, 471 IPC and Section 13 of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988 are scheduled offences under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002, investigation was initiated. It has been further revealed that major portion of funds were diverted by SEPL to suspicious entities under the guise of supply of software/hardware/materials/ which, in reality, was not done . The purpose of diversion of funds was to generate cash and thereby siphon off money from the system without utilizing the same for the SIEMENS the funds.
The allegation is that the petitioner arranged bogus entries with the help of entry providers to divert the government funds which were transferred from DTSPL to SEPL and further to ACI and other entitles .
The Counsel for the petitioner submitted that till today, no charge sheet has been filed in the predicate of fence, and in the absence of any charge sheet being filed, a presumption cannot be drawn as against the petitioner for commission of any scheduled offence under the PMLA.
A Single Bench of Justice K Sreenivasa Reddy noted that “ The petitioner was arrested on 04.03.2023 and since then he is in judicial custody and the petitioner is continuously attending before the investigating agency and cooperati ng with the investigation. The opinion that it is not necessary for this Court to detain the petitioner in jail further. “
The Bench took into consideration that no charge sheet has been filed in the predicate offence for the last more than 15 months . The petitioner herein is also a Chartered Accountant by profession and has been in jail from 04.0 3.2023. It is the first offence insofar as the petitioner is concerned.
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