INX Media case: PMLA Appellate Tribunal upholds ED attachment of Karti Chidambaram's Delhi property, bank accounts

The Appellate Tribunal under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) has dismissed an appeal filed by Congress MP Karti P Chidambaram and upheld the Enforcement Directorate’s (ED) attachment of his properties and bank accounts worth several crores.

In an order passed on October 10, 2018, the ED had attached several of Chidambaram’s bank accounts and his share in a South Delhi property. This Provisional Attachment Order (PAO) was upheld by the Adjudicating Authority (AA) on March 29, 2019.

This led to the appeal before the Appellate Tribunal. 

A Bench of Members Balesh Kumar and Rajesh Malhotra of the Appellate Tribunal on October 29 rejected the appeal.

Chidambaram argued that the attachment order was bad in law since the Enforcement Directorate filed the prosecution complaint in the case against him more than 365 days after the confirmation of attachment. 

It was contended that the ED violated Section 8(3)(a) of the PMLA, which limits the attachment period to 365 days during investigation. Chidambaram's case was that this delay required the release of the attached properties.

However, the Bench accepted ED’s contention that the delay fell within the COVID-19 limitation exclusion period as directed by the Supreme Court.

“The enormity of the situation for the Investigating Officer to have completed the investigation during the period of lockdown, when he was not even authorized to visit the witnesses or record their statements needs to be appreciated. In any case such witnesses could have declined to respond to the summons and tender their statements. The nature of Covid-19 did not rule out threat to life arising from mere human interaction. The extraordinary circumstances arisen due to Covid-19 would have had an impact on the pace of the investigations being conducted,” the Appellate Tribunal said. 

Ultimately, it dismissed Chidambaram’s appeal but observed that as per the Supreme Court’s judgement in Vijay Madanlal Choudhary & Ors v Union of India & Ors, the ED could take possession of attached properties only for “exceptional reasons”. 

Advocates Arshdeep Khurana, Akshat Gupta and Sidak Singh Anand appeared for Karti Chidambaram. 

Advocates Zoheb Hossain, Vivek Gurnani and Kanishk Maurya represented ED.