Delhi High Court reserves verdict in Delhi lawyer Rohit Tandon’s money laundering case [Read Arguments]

Today a single Bench of Justice SP Garg at the Delhi High Court heard the bail application of Delhi based lawyer Rohit Tandon in connection with the money laundering case..Rohit Tandon’s arguments.Appearing for Tandon, Senior Advocate Vikas Pahwa argued that the.petitioner is in custody for the past 103 days but neither has his arrest been recorded nor charge sheet filed by the Crime Branch.Pahwa argued that the principal allegation of the Enforcement Directorate is that there has been a violation under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002 (PMLA) post demonitization announcement on November 8, 2016 and that the public at large has been cheated.He contended that during the demonitization period, any amount of money could have been deposited and that would not amount to violation of PMLA. He further submitted that not even a single penny has been withdrawn and hence it cannot be argued that the public was cheated.Pahwa also argued “Tandon is answerable regarding the source of the money and will face trial accordingly, but this does not mean that he shall be in police custody forever”.Pahwa emphasised on Section 44 of the PMLA to buttress his argument regarding filing of the charge sheet. He said that the Act was specifically amended to deal with the confrontation between money laundering offences and scheduled offences. According to his interpretation of the section, trials for both the category of offences must be held together.At the previous hearing in March, Rohit Tandon was also represented by Senior Advocate Vivek Sood. The FIR filed under Sections 420/406/408/468/471/188/120B of the Indian Penal Code..Enforcement Directorate’s Arguments.ED through ASG Sanjay Jain and Central Government Standing Counsel Amit Mahajan contended that Rohit Tandon had asked a Chartered Accountant (Kamal Jain) to look for an arrangement for exchange of old currency notes post demonitization. Kamal Jain informed him about such an arrangement which involved a Kotak Mahindra Bank employee (Ashish Kumar.)ED then elaborated on the modus operandi of the arrangement. Firstly, the money would be deposited in various bank accounts. Then demand drafts would be issued in the names of fictitious persons. These demand drafts would be kept intact till such time there is enough currency in the market. Afterwards, these demand drafts would be cancelled out and the money would be given back to those who had deposited it.For the arrangement to succeed, companies which have many bank accounts were required. For such purposes one Raj Kumar Goel was contacted, who was the owner of various shell companies with dormant bank accounts.The commission for the arrangement was set at 35% and an advance was also given to Ashish Kumar. The ED stated that all these activities were carried out under the supervision of Rohit Tandon.It further stated that filing of charge sheet is not necessary in this matter as it is still being investigated. Similar contentions were raised in the matter of Virbhadra Singh, however they were not upheld by the courts. ED placed emphasis on Section 3 of the PMLA and stated that abetment of such offences is enough to prosecute..The Court after hearing out the parties reserved its judgement in the case..Image taken from here.