Delhi high court seeks ED reply on Jain’s plea seeking bail

New Delhi: The Delhi high court on Thursday sought the Enforcement Directorate (ED)’s stand on a plea by Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) minister Satyendar Jain seeking regular bail in a money laundering case

New Delhi: The Delhi high court on Thursday sought the Enforcement Directorate (ED)’s stand on a plea by Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) minister Satyendar Jain seeking regular bail in a money laundering case.

CCTV footage shows Jain getting a massage inside Tihar Jail. (ANI)

Justice Dinesh Kumar Sharma issued a notice to the agency on Jain’s plea challenging a trial court order dated November 17 which denied him bail saying that he was prima facie involved in concealing the proceeds of crime.

The court posted the matter for hearing on December 20.

In his plea, Jain said he was not in a position to influence witnesses or tamper with evidence, and was not a flight risk if granted relief in connection with ED’s enforcement case information report (ECIR, the equivalent of a first information report) registered on September 30, 2017, under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).

In his plea, the AAP leader claimed that since he was not in possession of any proceeds, the offence under the PMLA was not made out.

The plea said that the special judge and ED gravely misread and misapplied the provisions of PMLA by identifying proceeds of crime solely on the basis of accommodation entries (large amounts of money broken up into smaller, less-suspicious amounts) which cannot themselves lead to a punishable offence under the PMLA.

Jain is accused of laundering money through four companies where he held shares and amassed a disproportionate income. He was arrested by the ED on May 30, and is currently in judicial custody. The ED’s case is based on an FIR lodged by the Central Bureau of Investigation against the minister in 2017. He was granted regular bail by a trial court on September 6, 2019, in the case.

According to ED, Jain transferred money to Kolkata through hawala (an informal channel for transferring funds from one location to another through service providers) and got it back from dummy companies in the form of accommodation entries, even though he could not show the source of the money received. Accommodation entries are usually done by hawala operators to accommodate illegal money in a company through a shell firm or in cash.