Anti-money laundering laws cannot be invoked unless…: Big Supreme Court ruling

Section 120B of IPC provides punishment for criminal conspiracy.

New Delhi:

The Supreme Court dismissed a petition seeking review of its judgment, which held that Section 120B of the IPC cannot be invoked if the alleged criminal conspiracy is not related to an offense under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA). Someone registers. PMLA.

Section 120B of IPC provides punishment for criminal conspiracy.

Dismissing a petition seeking review of the November 29, 2023 judgment, Justices Abhay S Oka and Pankaj Mithal also said that a person accused of an offense under Section 3 of the PMLA does not necessarily have to be proved to be the accused. There is a scheduled offence.

“The application seeking review petition to be heard in open court is refused. Condonation of delay. We have perused the judgment and order dated November 29, 2023 and have sought review thereof. There is no error evident in the record. Even so, there is no Grounds for review. Petition for review denied,” the judge wrote in his recent order.

On November 29, the Supreme Court ruled that “an offense punishable under Section 120B of the IPC becomes a scheduled offense only if the alleged conspirator has committed an offense expressly included in the Schedule.” In its judgment, the Supreme Court interpreted the provisions of the Criminal Procedure Law and stated that while implementing the intention of the legislative body, if a certain provision of the criminal law can be interpreted in two reasonable ways, the court should generally adopt the interpretation that avoids application. . Impose criminal consequences.

In other words, a looser interpretation of both is needed.

“It can be seen from the definition of a prescribed offense in Section 2(1)(y) of the PMLA that the legislative intention is that every offense which may give rise to proceeds of crime need not be a prescribed offence. Therefore, only certain The offense is listed in the schedule,” it said.

The judge said allowing criminal conspiracy to become a scheduled offense in its own right, without any connection to a scheduled offense under the Prevention of Crime Act, would make the scheme “pointless or redundant”.

“If Section 120B of IPC can be treated as a separate offense for prosecution under PMLA, going by that logic, if the allegation is criminal conspiracy to commit an unscheduled offence, then a complaint can be filed under PMLA,” it says.

The judge said that just because there was a criminal conspiracy, it would not be a serious crime.

“Conspiracy is an agreement between defendants to commit an offence,” it said, adding that the ED’s proposed interpretation would fail to achieve the legislative objective of making only a few selected offenses a scheduled offence.

The Bench held that “the intention of the Legislature could not have been to make every offense not included in the Schedule a scheduled offense by applying Section 120B. Therefore, we are of the view that the inclusion of Section 120B of the IPC in Part A of the Schedule An offense under Article 100 will become a Scheduled offense only if the criminal conspiracy is to commit any offense already included in Part A, B or C of Schedule.” The Supreme Court in November 2023 ruled against Kanata The verdict came in an appeal against a Kampong High Court order that refused to quash the money laundering case against a woman who was a former vice-chancellor of a Union University.

The ED booked her under the PMLA, citing Section 120B of the IPC, even though the offense charged against him was not included in the prescribed offences.

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