Indore (Madhya Pradesh)
"Enforcement Directorate (ED) is currently investigating 4,700 cases filed under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act 2002 (PMLA). Out of thes, 2,086 cases were filed in just the last 4 years. PMLA deals with cases of black money and its laundering to make it white," said well-known Supreme Court lawyer and chartered accountant Ashwin Taneja.
He was addressing a workshop organised on the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, Black Money and Benami Act, here on Friday. It was organised jointly by Tax Practitioners Association (TPA) and Indore CA Branch.
Taneja said it is only because of this Act that over Rs 18,000 cr have been recovered from fugitives like Neerav Modi, Vijay Mallya, and Mahul Chouksi among others.
Taneja said that still hundreds of cases worth about Rs 67,000 cr are pending in the Supreme Court. Explaining the need for PMLA, Taneja said that the ED is the investigating agency of PMLA cases.
He said that we hear about this law only after the Modi government came to power in cases related Nirav Modi, and Vijay Mallya among others, but this law came into existence 20 years back during the tenure Atal Bihari Vajpayee government. Since then 313 arrests have been made in different cases registered under this law.
However, this figure is much less than the number of cases registered per year in other countries. PMLA was first enacted in 2002, but thereafter it has been amended three times (2005, 2009 and 2012). The
last amendment was done in the year 2012, under which the list of offences included concealment of money, acquisition, possession and use of money for criminal purposes was made.
Taneja said that now surrendering money after any Income Tax search survey should be done very carefully because this surrender will provide immunity only from income tax, but can implicate the taxpayer in other laws like PMLA, Black Money Act etc.
Taneja said that in PMLA law, there is no time limitation in opening the case. Therefore, any offence under these Acts can come on the radar at any time in future.
On this occasion, chartered accountant Girish Agrawal was honoured for being appointed as Accounts Member in Income Tax Tribunal. He is the first person in the city to reach this position.