Bombay High Court quashes ECIR against Naresh Goyal in money laundering case

The Bombay High Court on Thursday quashed the Enforcement Case Information Report (ECIR) lodged by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in the money laundering case against Jet Airways founder Naresh Goyal.A division bench of Justices Revati Mohite Dere and PK Chavan quashed the ECIR dated February 20, 2020, the investigation and all proceedings and actions emanating from the ECIR against Goyal on the ground of being illegal and contrary to law."There is no scheduled offence against Naresh Goyal, his wife, in view of the closure report filed by the police, which was accepted by the courts. There being no predicate offence i.e. scheduled offence. The ECIR will not survive and as such will have to be quashed and set aside", the Court held in its 15 page order. .The order was passed on petitions filed by Jet Airways founder Naresh Goyal and his wife Anita Goyal seeking quashing of the ECIR.The ECIR against Goyals was registered on the basis of a first information report (FIR) lodged by the Mumbai police in February 2020 on a complaint filed by Akbar Travels. The FIR booked Naresh and Anita Goyal under offences of cheating, criminal conspiracy and forgery of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).The travel agent alleged that it had suffered a loss of over ₹46 crores after the airline company cancelled flight operations from October 2018..The petition filed through Naik Naik & Co’s team led by advocates Ameet Naik and Abhishek Kale, highlighted that the ECIR had been registered on the basis of a complaint filed with the Mumbai police in 2018. In March 2020, the police had filed a closure report which concluded that it had not found any substance in the criminal complaint and the dispute seemed to be civil in nature. This was accepted by a Metropolitan Magistrate Court and despite protest by the ED, was upheld by the Supreme Court.Subsequently, they moved the High Court seeking quashing of the ECIR since predicate offence was itself not made out.In January this year, the High Court ordered that no coercive action against Goyals.The ED opposed the plea arguing on February 22 that the ECIR could not be quashed as it was an internal, private ‘piece of paper which could not be considered a statutory document.“ECIR can never be quashed. It is not a statutory documentary and a simple paper. If we want to initiate a civil case, then ECIR helps. You cannot equate ECIR with FIR. What happens to the other actions that I have taken basis the ECIR, like recording statement of witnesses, what happens to that?” the ED counsel argued.The Court was, however, not impressed with the submission, and had queried on Wednesday what would survive if the scheduled offence which formed the basis for registering an ECIR had been closed. The hearing had been adjourned to today after the Court asked ED where it could quash an ECIR or not, especially in light of the statement made by the Solicitor General Tushar Mehta in Supreme Court in another case that after acceptance of closure report in predicate offence, an ECIR by ED would not survive.The Court after hearing the parties today proceeded to quash the ECIR..[Read order]