New Delhi, Aug 8 (UNI) The Supreme Court today issued notice to Congress MP Karti Chidambaram on an Enforcement Directorate (ED) petition challenging a Delhi High Court order that directed deferring arguments on framing charges in money laundering cases linked to the Chinese visa and Aircel-Maxis matters until charges are framed in the related predicate offences.
A Bench comprising Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi passed the order after hearing Additional Solicitor General S.V. Raju, who argued that there was no legal basis for halting PMLA proceedings until the predicate offence trial reaches the charge-framing stage.
He contended that delaying the trial could result in loss of crucial evidence if witnesses were unavailable later.
Initially, Justice Kant observed that the High Court’s order might not prejudice the ED, noting, “If in the predicate offence tomorrow no charge is framed, or the trial court frames charges but they are later set aside, all the labour will go to waste.”
The ASG countered that allowing the trial to proceed while withholding judgment until the predicate offence is decided was a balanced approach, citing two precedents on the issue.
The Bench remarked that the High Court had “interfered a little prematurely” and could have instead directed that both trials run concurrently, with the PMLA case not concluding before the predicate offence trial.
The Delhi High Court’s order, passed by Justice Ravinder Dudeja, had accepted Chidambaram’s plea to defer charge-framing in the PMLA cases until charges were finalised in the related CBI FIRs.
The High Court held that the existence of a scheduled offence and proceeds of crime were essential for continuation of PMLA proceedings, and distinguished the Supreme Court’s ruling in S. Martin, where trials in both matters were allowed to proceed simultaneously with the caveat that no judgment be pronounced in the PMLA case before the predicate offence trial concluded.
The Supreme Court recently stayed a PMLA trial in another matter where no chargesheet had been filed in the predicate offence for over seven years.
