After Satyendar Jain, now Ankush and Vaibhav Jain move Delhi HC for bail in ED case
Dec 10, 2022
New Delhi [India], December 10 : Accused Vaibhav Jain and Ankush Jain have now moved the Delhi High Court seeking bail in a money laundering case allegedly involving Delhi Minister Satyendar Jain. All three persons are presently in judicial custody.
The Bench of Justice Dinesh Kumar Sharma of Delhi High Court is scheduled to hear the bail pleas of both persons on December 12, 2022.
Last week Satyendar Jain approached Delhi High Court with a bail petition challenging a trial court order denying him bail in a money-laundering case. The Court has also issued notice to the Enforcement Directorate and fixed the matter for December 20, 2022.
While dismissing the bail plea of Satyender Jain, the trial court also rejected the bail petitions of Vaibhav Jain and Ankush Jain, co accused in the case.
The Trial Court has said, it has prima facie come on record that applicants/accused Vaibhav Jain and Ankush Jain knowingly assisted co-accused Satyendar Kumar Jain in the concealment of proceeds of crime and by projecting the proceeds of crime to be untainted by claiming the proceeds of crime to be their unaccounted income under IDS, 2016 and hence, are prima facie guilty of the offence of money laundering as defined in Section 3 of the PMLA
Satyender Jain was arrested on May 30, 2022, under sections of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act by the Enforcement Directorate.
In his bail in Delhi High Court, Satyender Jain stated that the trial court Judge and ED gravely misread and misapplied the PMLA by identifying proceeds of crime solely on the basis of accommodations entries. That accommodation entries cannot itself lead to a punishable offence under PMLA.
The Rouse Avenue Court recently dismissed the bail petition and said that the accused Satyendar Kumar Jain had knowingly done such activity to obliterate the tracing of the source of ill-gotten money and accordingly, the proceeds of crime were layered through Kolkata-based entry operators in a way that its source was difficult to decipher.
Hence, the applicant/accused Satyendar Kumar Jain has prima facie indulged in the offence of money laundering of more than Rs.1 crore. Further, the offence of money laundering is a serious economic offence and the view of the Supreme Court of India with regard to economic offences is that they constitute a class apart and need to be visited with a different approach in the matter of bail, said the trial court.
Hence, the accused Satyendar Kumar Jain is not entitled to the benefit of bail regarding the twin conditions provided in Section 45 of the PMLA. The application of accused Satyendar Kumar Jain is dismissed, said the Trial Court Judge Vikas Dhull.
The enforcement agency has alleged that the companies which were "beneficially owned and controlled" by Jain had received accommodation entries amounting to Rs 4.81 crore from the shell companies against cash transferred to Kolkata-based entry operators through a hawala route.
The ED case is based on a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) complaint registered on the allegation that Satyender Jain had acquired movable properties in the name of various persons from February 14, 2015, to May 31, 2017, which he could not satisfactorily account for.
