The Delhi High Court dismissed bail of applicant, Tarun Kumar on the ground that there was sufficient incriminating evidence about involvement of accused in offence of money laundering
The SBFL was engaged in manufacturing and selling food items like wheat flour, rice etc. The company was managed through its Directors / Guarantors – Kewal Krishan Kumar, Siddharth Kumar and Sunanda Kumar. SBFL had around 250 regular employees. It was stated that the applicant was one such employee and was drawing renumeration as an employee.
Consequently, it was alleged that due to the fraudulent activities, SBFL failed to discharge its loan liability and caused loss to the consortium member banks to the tune of INR 3269.42 Crore. Subsequent to the recording of the ECIR, the investigation was initiated under the provision of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002 (PMLA).
The Counsel for the applicant submitted that the applicant was a mere shareholder and a director but was also not involved in any management or decision making. The Applicant was made a director only for the purpose of meeting the quorum requirements under the Companies Act.
Moreover, the Applicant has never drawn any salary, remuneration, incentive, perks whatsoever as a director which further substantiates that the Applicant has never acted in the capacity of a director. The Applicant was not arrayed as an Accused in the ECIR or first three Complaints, neither was named in the FIR and was never summoned by CBI.
The Counsel appearing for the ED submitted that the allegations that the statements of employees being relied upon are cut, copy, paste is unsubstantiated for the reasons that merely because there is an overlap in certain part of the statements there cannot be a presumption that voluntary statements recorded under section 50 of PMLA are unreliable. The veracity of these statements cannot be doubted especially when the makers of the statements have neither resiled nor alleged any kind of coercion.
A Single Bench comprising Justice Jasmeet Singh observed that “I am of the opinion that there is sufficient incriminating evidence about the involvement of the accused/applicant in the offence of money laundering. It is not only the statements u/s 50 PMLA which show the involvement of the applicant but other material such as emails as well as documents containing the signatures of the applicant which are also indicative of involvement of the applicant in the offence of money laundering. The statements have not been retracted.”
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