Acquittal in predicate offence no bar to PMLA proceedings: High court | India News

NEW DELHI: The Punjab and Haryana HC has held that irrespective of acquittal of a person in a predicate offence he can still be proceeded under Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) as an accused, emphasising on the independent nature of offence of money laundering. The verdict came in a case related to Punjab Congress MLA Sukhpal Singh Khaira who had moved HC seeking dismissal of his trial under PMLA on the grounds that the predicate offence against him in which he was booked under the NDPS Act was stayed by Supreme Court.One after another now three HCs have upheld the independent nature of offence of money laundering and subsequent attachment of properties under PMLA if ED establishes money trail of proceeds of crime. Khaira was arrested by ED in Nov 2021 in a money laundering case for his alleged ties to international drug syndicate, and the agency later filed a chargesheet and trial in the case in in progress.“The offence of money laundering is independent of the scheduled offence; nevertheless, it gets its substratum from the proceeds of crime obtained as a result of commission of a scheduled offence. Therefore, existence of scheduled offence is a sine qua non so far as commission of offence under the PMLA is concerned, though the accused under the PMLA need not necessarily be a person accused of committing the scheduled offence as he can still indulge in a process and activity connected with proceeds of the crime derived from commission of a scheduled offence,” Justice Tribhuvan Dahiya of the Punjab and Haryana High Court observed in a judgment pronounced on Friday.In this case, Khaira, ex-AAP MLA who contested and won on a Congress ticket in 2022 assembly polls. has been accused of giving protection to international drug syndicates that allegedly funded his election expenditure. The ED has said it has established a money trail in the use of proceeds of crime by Khaira.The court acknowledged that Khaira facilitated sale of drugs by co-accused Gurdev Singh and received the drug money from him. “Under Section 3 of PMLA, he is accused of using proceeds of crime generated by offence under the NDPS Act by co-accused Gurdev Singh, who stands convicted for scheduled offences…even if petitioner is acquitted of charges pertaining to scheduled offences, his prosecution under the PMLA will remain unaffected,” Justice Dahiya noted.