New Delhi: A Delhi court Monday accepted the closure report in one of the money laundering cases filed by the Enforcement Directorate (ED), related to irregularities in hosting the Commonwealth Games in 2010. Following this, the Congress has demanded an apology from Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Aam Aadmi Party chief Arvind Kejriwal for creating a falsehood of scams.
The closure report, filed by the ED, was based on the closure report filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in 2014 in one of the cases linked to corruption by former Congress leader and then chairman of the organising committee Suresh Kalmadi, Maharashtra cadre IAS officer Vijay Kumar Gautam, the then chief operating officer (COO) of the event organising committee and others.
The judicial proceedings have reached the level of examination of prosecution evidence in the other case filed against Kalmadi.
ThePrint had in February reported that the CBI had closed 11 cases out of the 19 it had filed in the wake of the alleged scandal in hosting the CWG, which included several construction projects in the national capital.
The CBI registered this particular case in August 2012 against Kalmadi, Gautam, A.K. Mattoo, the treasurer of the organising committee, Lalit Bhanot, the Secretary General of the organising committee, and Swiss firm Event Knowledge Services (EKS) and its then-CEO.
In the FIR, it was alleged that organising committee of the game awarded contracts in two segments—Games Workforce Service (GWS), and Games Planning, Project & Risk Management Services (GPPRMS)—in a wrongful way to consortium of EKS, and Ernst and Young (E&Y), that caused the committee a loss of around Rs 30 crore.
However, the CBI had filed a closure report in January 2014 in this case, conceding neither any “incriminating evidence” against the accused persons nor any evidence establishing their malicious intentions. A special CBI court in Delhi had accepted the CBI’s closure report in February 2016.
As the court accepted ED’s closure report in a case linked to Kalmadi, the Congress party Monday demanded an apology from Prime Minister Narendra Modi and former Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal for creating a falsehood of scams around the allocation of 2G spectrum and CWG games that falsely accused two former leaders—Manmohan Singh and Sheila Dikshit.
“Before 2014, Arvind Kejriwal and the BJP created false scams like 2G and the Commonwealth to defame Congress. Two very honest and dedicated leaders—Dr Manmohan Singh and Mrs Sheila Dikshit were falsely accused. The truth about 2G had already come out in court. Today, the ED’s closure report in the Commonwealth case has also been accepted by the court. It is clear that both allegations were false! Narendra Modi and Arvind Kejriwal should apologise to Congress and the people of India for misleading the country,” the party’s general secretary in-charge of communications, Jairam Ramesh, wrote on X.
Accepting ED’s closure report, Special Judge Sanjeeb Aggarwal noted that since the CBI could not establish any scheduled offence, there was no generation of proceeds of crime. Hence, the ECIR should not be continued.
“Since the closure report filed in the predicate offence FIR/RC filed by the CBI was accepted by the Court of Ld. Special Judge, CBI, vide order dated 20.02.2016 and the said closure report filed by the CBI has not been challenged, therefore, the same has attained finality,” Special CBI judge Sanjeev Aggarwal noted in his order.
“In the present closure report, it is stated that the offence u/S. 3 of the PMLA has not been proved due to the absence of the proceeds of crime, as no schedule offence as defined in 2(1)(y) of PMLA has been committed.”
“Therefore, since during the investigations, the prosecution has failed to make out a offence u/S. 3 of the PMLA, as defined u/S. 3 of the PMLA and punishable u/S. 4 of the PMLA, 2002, therefore, as no offence u/S. 3 of the PMLA, 2002 has been made out or has been committed, despite discreet investigations by the ED, therefore, there is no reason to continue with the present ECIR, as a consequence, the closure report filed by the ED stands accepted,” the judge finally noted, ordering the investigating officer to return all documents and articles seized during the investigation.
(Edited by Zinnia Ray Chaudhuri)
Also read: 19 FIRs, 15 yrs, zero accountability—unresolved saga of CWG ‘scam’ that changed Delhi & its politics