The Supreme Court on July 14 declined to entertain an appeal by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) against a Telangana High Court decision allowing Y.S. Bharathi Reddy, the wife of Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Jaganmohan Reddy, to substitute the property attached by the central agency in a money laundering case with fixed deposits.
A Bench of Justices AS Oka and Sanjay Karol asked whether the immovable property attached by the agency was the proceeds of the alleged crime.
Additional Solicitor General S. Raju, for the ED, said they were not, but amounted to the “equivalent value”.
Senior advocate Niranjan Reddy and advocate Liz Mathew appeared for Ms. Reddy. They referred to several portions of the High Court order which had concluded that the property attached were not the actual proceeds of the alleged crime.
The property was attached by the ED under money laundering charges in a corruption case involving Bharathi Cement.
Refusing to intervene in the High Court order, the apex court noted that “the property attached was not the actual one that was acquired from the proceeds of the crime. This finding is not disputes by the petitioner [ED]. Moreover, it is not the case of the petitioner that the value of the attached property mentioned in the order [of the Telangana High Court] is incorrect. In view of this factual position, we decline to entertain the special leave petition,” the Bench recorded in the order.
According to the ED’s special leave petition, the High Court, in its order on November 28 last year, “erringly directed the release of the confirmed attached immovable property pertaining to the respondent [Ms. Reddy] in lieu of fixed deposit for a sum of ₹ 1,36,91,285”.
The petition said it was “copiously aggrieved” by the order which had also allowed Ms. Reddy’s offer to give a fixed deposit of ₹6,13,89,370 in lieu of 61,38,937 equity shares of ₹10 each belonging to M/s Sandur Power Company Pvt Ltd.
The petition had contended that the High Court order, despite displaying a lack of rationale, was also “completely detrimental” to the spirit and object of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002.
“The High Court failed to consider the stand of the department that no provision exists in the 2002 Act which speaks about the substitution of confirmed attached properties with fixed deposit,” the ED petition had argued.
