Observing that jail is the norm and bail is an exception under certain enactments such as the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) of 2002, the Madras High Court on Monday denied bail to Non Resident Indian (NRI) Ahmed A.R. Buhari accused of having cheated several public sector power companies by supplying inferior quality coal at inflated prices and laundering the over invoiced money through shell companies.
Justice G. Jayachandran said, the allegation levelled by the Directorate of Enforcement (ED) against the petitioner was that he had supplied inferior quality coal of Indonesian origin by routing them through his shell companies at Dubai. The money siphoned off was transferred to offshore entities in UAE, British Virgin Islands and Mauritius and brought back to India as equity investment in his Indian entity Coastal Energen Private Limited.
During the course of investigation, the ED sleuths had asked the petitioner to furnish bank account statements of the offshore companies involved in the transaction, the original invoices raised by the Indonesian coal miners to his Dubai based entities and books of accounts of his foreign entities located in Mauritius and British Virgin Islands. The petitioner was reluctant to part with those crucial documents and had given evasive replies.
