ED search against provisions of PMLA, says Tasmac at Madras HC

CHENNAI: The Tamil Nadu State Marketing Corporation, on Wednesday, stated before the Madras High Court that the Enforcement Directorate crossed the thin line between its domain and scheduled offences, which is a procedural irregularity and against the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA). It further said the enforcement agency breached its officials' privacy.

A division bench of Justices SM Subramaniam and K Rajasekar heard the petitions moved by the State and Tasmac, challenging the ED's raid proceedings.

Senior counsel Vikram Chaudhary continued his second-day submissions, mainly contending on two aspects, that the ED's raid proceedings were illegal and breached the privacy of the Tasmac officials.

"There is an umbilical connection between the ED's proceedings and scheduled offence. It cannot go beyond the scope of the scheduled offence, if the registered scheduled offence is closed by the agency concerned the ED also should close its proceedings," said the senior counsel, adding that there were no scheduled offences in this case and they restrained themselves from disclosing the enforcement case information report (details of the scheduled offences), during the search saying it was confidential.

The Supreme Court has already said that reasons to believe for search and seizure have to be furnished to the affected person, but it was not disclosed to Tasmac in the present case, he said.

"The ED is not police and they cannot enter into any premises to conduct a search and launch a case. They should be confined within the scheduled offences, it can only act on the offences established by other agencies, said the counsel.

He also submitted that ED breached the privacy of Tasmac officials and employees, including women, by detaining them even until midnight and conducting the search for over 60 hours, submitted the counsel.

Even the counter submitted by the ED disclosed that they allowed the employees to go home at midnight and asked them to come back the next morning, how can they investigate the employees during the night time, it is harrasment, contended the counsel.

Further, the data from officials and employees were seized by the ED and no reason was disclosed which is breach of privacy, he alleged.

As the submissions of Tasmac were not completed, the matter was posted to April 15 for further submission.