NEW DELHI“As per section 17 of PMLA, a search can be conducted on the premises of ‘any person’ who has committed any act which constitutes money laundering or is in possession of proceeds of crime, or is in possession of any records relating to money laundering, or is in possession of any property related to crime. Though as per proviso (since omitted), there was a pre-condition of there being a complaint or report, it was never the requirement of law that any such ‘report’ or ‘complaint’ should also be against the ‘same very person’,” a bench of Justices Vivek Chaudhary and Manoj Jain noted Friday.The court noted that a person may be in possession of proceeds of crime but still may not be accused of any scheduled offence or offence of money laundering.“In a given situation, a person can be a recipient of proceeds of crime without having any criminal intent and, therefore, it is not necessary that any such person should be an accused in a prior complaint or report. Thus, a search was permissible once the conditions specified under Section 17 of PMLA were satisfied,” it pointed out, setting aside the clean chit given to an associate of a PMLA accused.While attachment under PMLA is made on account of urgency as there is also a likelihood of the proceeds being concealed or transferred, no such pre-condition, generally speaking, exists while conducting any search and seizure, the court said.The case stemmed from an appeal filed by ED against a tribunal’s direction to de-freeze cash and electronic devices seized during a 2016 search at the premises of one Amlendu Pandey, who was not an accused in the original prosecution complaint filed in 2011 against alleged hawala operator Hassan Ali Khan. Pandey later passed away.
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