E-Paper
ED chief urges caution, fairness in probes; sets 500-case target
The top officer directed ED personnel to ensure that summons and other statutory notices are issued “judiciously”.
Enforcement Directorate (ED) chief Rahul Navin has asked all units of the federal financial crimes probe agency to exercise “caution, fairness and accountability” while conducting money-laundering investigations, stressing the judicious use of the wide statutory powers available to officers.
The top officer directed ED personnel to ensure that summons and other statutory notices are issued “judiciously”, based on “clear necessity and proper application of mind”.
The directions were issued during the three-day 34th quarterly conference of zonal officers of the ED, held from February 19-21 in Guwahati. The meeting was chaired by Navin and attended by all senior officers, including special directors, joint directors, additional directors and deputy directors.
“Discussions stressed that the focus must be on meaningful achievement of targets, logical conclusion of investigations, timely filing of prosecution complaints, and ensuring that attachments and penalties are legally sustainable and effectively realised,” the ED said in a statement.
“The conference emphasised that with significant statutory powers available under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) comes a corresponding responsibility to exercise them with caution, fairness and accountability. It was advised that officers must remain mindful of the impact of enforcement actions and ensure that summons and other statutory notices are issued judiciously, based on clear necessity and proper application of mind,” the agency added.
Underlining that it has set a target of filing 500 prosecution complaints in the current financial year, the ED said, “all field formations were urged to make concerted efforts to achieve the same, while also preparing for an enhanced target in the next financial year”.
“The need for this enhanced target is to proactively conclude long-pending investigations and to systematically reduce the life-cycle of new investigations to a reasonable time-frame of one to two years, except in exceptionally complex cases,” it added.
Navin also outlined priority areas requiring a focused and coordinated approach across all zones.
According to the ED statement, “all zonal heads were directed to intensify efforts in tracing and securing proceeds of crime parked abroad, particularly in jurisdictions such as Dubai and Singapore”.
Officers were asked to use international cooperation channels, financial intelligence inputs and analysis of cross-border fund flows to identify layering structures and beneficial ownership behind offshore assets.
Similarly, teams were directed to look for potential collusion between corporate debtors, resolution professionals, members of committees of creditors (CoCs) and other stakeholders; to prioritise investigations in digital arrest cases, especially those involving organised syndicates, cross-border elements and large-scale victimisation; to focus on dismantling financial networks behind illegal betting platforms, including payment gateways, mule accounts and offshore operators; to target the financial networks of organised drug syndicates; to undertake detailed financial and forensic analysis of schemes involving artificial inflation of stock prices, circular trading and the use of shell entities to launder proceeds through the securities market; and to examine suspicious cross-border financial flows linked to anti-national activities.
The agency also advised officers to leverage mechanisms such as Interpol and the domestic platform Bharatpol for issuing colour notices, particularly purple notices. A purple notice issued by Interpol is aimed at seeking or providing information on the modus operandi, objects, devices and concealment methods used by criminals.
Officers were further directed to complete adjudication of all pending cases registered under the now-repealed Foreign Exchange Regulation Act (FERA) by March 31.
Challenges related to delays, obtaining sanctions for prosecution, non-cooperation by police in some states, limited manpower, logistical constraints in remote regions, lack of digitised land records and valuation issues linked to volatile digital assets were also discussed, the statement said.
It added that officers were encouraged to make full use of formal channels of cooperation with foreign countries, including Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty requests, letters rogatory and extradition processes.
“The value of building direct professional relationships with foreign enforcement counterparts was highlighted as early informal engagement often facilitates quicker intelligence sharing and ultimately a smooth transition to formal requests, thereby strengthening ED’s effectiveness in handling cross-border money-laundering and asset recovery cases,” the agency said.
