Delhi High Court seeks ED's response to plea by Jacqueline Fernandez for quashing money laundering case

The Delhi High Court on Thursday issued notice to the Enforcement Directorate on a plea by actress Jacqueline Fernandez to quash the money laundering case against her..ED has booked Fernandez in relation to the alleged ₹200 crore money laundering scam perpetrated by conman Sukesh Chandrashekhar. The Bollywood actress has sought quashing of the Enforcement Case Information Report (ECIR) and ED’s prosecution complaint (equivalent to a chargesheet) naming her as an accused in the case..Justice Jyoti Singh issued notice to the ED and listed the case for further hearing on January 29. .Special Counsel Zoheb Hossain appeared for the ED and challenged the maintainability of the plea. Hossain argued that special court has taken cognisance of the prosecution complaint and said that a prima facie case was made out. "The order of cognisance is a valid order... Without a challenge to the cognisance order, where such a view is in existence, the challenge to the prosecution complaint may not be available," he said. Hossain further stated that even after Fernandez got to know about Chandrashekhar being involved in criminal activities, she continued to receive gifts from him and the petition to quash the case is an attempt to stall the proceedings. .Senior Advocate Siddharth Aggarwal appeared for Fernandez and argued that he has not sought quashing of the prosecution complaint in its entirety but only so far as it relates to Fernandez. He further contended that Fernandez did not receive the gifts knowingly and that she is a witness in the predicate offence. .The Court considered the submissions and remarked that the issue involves substantial question of law. It, therefore, issued notice on the plea. .It is alleged that Chandrashekhar reached out to business entrepreneur Aditi Singh using spoofed telephone call and deceitfully posed as a high-level government official acting on behalf of the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) and the Home Minister and duped Singh of nearly ₹200 crores over a span of seven to eight months.In her plea, Fernandez has stated that ED filed the ECIR based on the first information report(FIR) registered by the Delhi Police Special Cell dated August 7, 2021. Initially, the prosecution complaint was filed against eight accused in December 2021 and Fernandez was not named in the complaint.She said that she appeared before the ED five times and recorded her statement under Section 50 of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).On August 17, 2022 the ED filed the second supplementary prosecution complaint in the matter and arraigned Fernandez as an accused. Fernandez argued that like Singh, Chandrashekhar adopted the same deceptive tactic of making a spoofed phone call posing as a high-ranking government official to get in touch with her makeup artist Shaan..She claimed that she is also a victim of the Chandrashekhar’s scheme..The plea contended that no offence of money laundering is made out against Fernandez and that she is a prosecution witness in the predicate offence (Delhi Police case) and the fact that her statement has been recorded as a prosecution witness naturally leads to a favourable conclusion in her favour.“This supports the contention that she had no knowledge whatsoever of the predicate offence committed by the main accused, Sukesh Chandrashekhar and his associates,” the plea said.