The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has returned assets worth over ₹63,000 crore to victims, accounting for about 27% of the ₹2.36 lakh crore it has attached so far under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), according to the latest data of the financial crimes probe agency.
A major chunk of money has been returned to the individual investors or victim banks in high profile cases involving Vijay Mallya ( ₹14,131 crore), Pearl group ( ₹15,582 crore), Sterling Biotech Ltd probe ( ₹9,811 crore), Mehul Choksi ( ₹2,565 crore), and Nirav Modi ( ₹1,112 crore). To be sure, all the cases in the Sterling Biotech probe are now closed following a November 2025 Supreme Court order, but these assets were attached and restored before that.
“For the past couple of years, the focus has been to attach the properties under the PMLA so that accused persons cannot alienate them and then coordinate with banks, NBFCs, resolution professionals, etc. to restitute the assets, so that victims can get their defrauded money back,” said an officer, who asked not to be named.
The ED data, seen by HT, suggests that the agency didn’t even consider restoring attached proceeds of crime (PoCs) to the victims from 2005 (when PMLA came into effect) to 2019 and everything it seized became case property and remained in court’s custody till the trial was over. The restitution, allowed under section 8 of the Act, first began in 2019-20, when total assets worth ₹1,613 crore were returned to the banks and other victims. Thereafter, PoCs of ₹13,517 were restored in 2021-22, ₹71 crore in 2023-24, ₹15,263 crore in 2024-25 and ₹33,000 crore in 2025-26.
{{/usCountry}}The ED data, seen by HT, suggests that the agency didn’t even consider restoring attached proceeds of crime (PoCs) to the victims from 2005 (when PMLA came into effect) to 2019 and everything it seized became case property and remained in court’s custody till the trial was over. The restitution, allowed under section 8 of the Act, first began in 2019-20, when total assets worth ₹1,613 crore were returned to the banks and other victims. Thereafter, PoCs of ₹13,517 were restored in 2021-22, ₹71 crore in 2023-24, ₹15,263 crore in 2024-25 and ₹33,000 crore in 2025-26.
{{/usCountry}}Officials said the ED is aiming to restore around 40% to 50% of the attached assets by the end of this year.
As of December 2025, ED has registered 8,391 money laundering cases across the country. However, the courts have delivered judgements in only 58 cases, out of which conviction orders have been passed in 55 cases convicting 123 accused persons, according to a reply by the government in Parliament in February this year.
Besides PMLA, the ED has also accelerated its action under the 2018 law –– Fugitive Economic Offenders (FEO) Act, by confiscating assets worth ₹930 crore till date.
The PMLA was enacted in 2002 and implemented from July 1, 2005, to check serious crimes of tax evasion, generation of black money and money laundering.