Amendments made to Prevention of Money-laundering Act

Amendments have been made in Prevention of Money-laundering Act, 2002 (PMLA) through Finance Act 2018, the Ministry of Finance said in a notification on Thursday.

These amendments aim at further enhancing the effectiveness of the Act, widen its scope, and take care of certain procedural difficulties faced by Enforcement Directorate (ED) in prosecution of PMLA cases.

Major amendments proposed include measures to enhance effectiveness of PMLA such as amendment in definition of proceeds of crime.

The present amendment shall allow to proceed against property equivalent to proceeds to crimes held outside the country also.

Other amendment include amendment in bail provisions which would make the applicability of bail conditions uniform to all the offences under PMLA, instead of only those offences under the schedule which are liable to imprisonment of more than three years.

This will be a significant step forward in delinking the proceedings against scheduled offences and money laundering offences under PMLA.

Further limit of Rs. one crore shall allow court to apply bail provisions more leniently to less serious PMLA cases.

This provision shall strengthen the PMLA with respect to corporate frauds.

Section 447 of Companies Act is being included as scheduled offence under PMLA, so that the Registrar of Companies in suitable cases would be able to report such cases for action by ED under PMLA provisions.