Probe money laundering charges against Amar, Allahabad HC tells ED

The Allahabad High Court on Friday directed the Enforcement Directorate (ED) to investigate charges of money laundering against member of Parliament in the Rajya Sabha, Amar Singh. It said the matter needed a thorough probe, since it had "national ramifications".

The court gave the directive, while dismissing a petition by the former Samajwadi Party general secretary, who had challenged a report lodged against him in Kanpur nearly two years ago. The report accused Singh of financial irregularities when the party was in power in Uttar Pradesh.

"Money laundering poses a serious threat to financial system integrity. It may emerge as a parallel economic system, within a country controlled by a few. This may destabilise and do away with a sound economy”, a said division bench of judges Imtiyaz Murtaza and S S Tiwari. “We feel it is a pre-eminently appropriate case for exercise of extra-ordinary power and the matter needs a thorough probe by a special cell, since the matter has national ramifications,” they said.

The court asked the ED to start the investigation “within two weeks” and submit a status report before the court within a month of the commencement of the probe.

The report against Singh in Kanpur was lodged by a local resident, Shiv Kant Tripathi, under various sections of the Indian Penal Code, the Prevention of Corruption Act and the Money Laundering Act. Tripathi had also said that the issue should be probed by the ED.

The petitions by Singh and Tripathi were clubbed together and heard by the bench which had reserved its judgement on March 28. Senior lawyer Ram Jethmalani, who argued on behalf of Singh, described the report lodged against his client as "an act of malice and fraud", which were aimed at "settling political scores" and, hence, was "liable to be quashed".

However, the court said it found "no substance in the submissions that the proceeding is liable to be quashed on grounds political rivalries". The court also took a serious view of the allegation by the petitioner that Singh, when he was the chairman of the Uttar Pradesh Development Council, “had indulged in money laundering by creating a web of shell companies”. The court said, "The ED, being a central agency, shall be the appropriate cell capable of carrying out a thorough probe”. It said the matter would be listed for another hearing in the first week of July.