Kolkata: A PMLA court has ruled that there was no prima facie case against Nalini Chidambaram, wife of Congress leader P. Chidambaram, for money laundering in the high-profile Saradha chit fund scam.
“I hold that no prima facie case for the offence under Section 3 punishable under Section 4 of the PML Act is made out against the accused, Mrs. Nalini Chidambaram. Consequently, the supplementary complaint dated 5/07/2024 stands dismissed,” judge Prashanta Mukhopadhyay wrote in his order passed on 25 July.
The ED had argued that Nalini, a senior advocate, had received Rs 1.34 crore between 2010 and 2021 from the erstwhile Saradha Group chairman Sudipta Sen and that no invoice was made when the payments were received.
“I find that in a collective investment scheme or ponzi scam of Rs 19830237713 (about 2000 cr), an amount of Rs 1.349 cr. is so minuscule that the same cannot, under any stretch of imagination, be said to have nexus with the activity of concealment or disguising the illicit source of the same,” reads the order copy.
ThePrint has a copy of the 7-page order.
According to the ED, Nalini Chidambaram had informed it through her advocate in 2016, that she had received the said amount after Tax Deducted at Source (TDS) for her legal consultation on behalf of her associate Manoranjana Sinh.
Manoranjana Sinh, the estranged wife of senior Congress leader Matang Sinh, was arrested by the CBI in October 2015, in connection with the Saradha multi-crore chit fund scam. The former journalist’s company GNN Ltd had allegedly received Rs 25 crore from Saradha Chit Funds.
“As far as the acquisition or possession is concerned, the lawyer’s fee from such tainted persons is not uncommon, in as much as, the clients approach the lawyers when he / she faces such serious legal issues. A lawyer, many times, sends his/her client(s) to other lawyers or friends or officers or professionals for further assistance when he/she finds that those other lawyers or officers or professionals are having expertise in that particular field. There is nothing wrong in it,” the order says.
“In the present case, Mrs. Chidambaram guided her client to take assistance of other professionals who were having better skill and knowledge to provide him /her (Mr. Sudipta Sen or his companies or Manoranjana Sinh) proper advice”.
The ED had alleged that the emails exchanged between the advocate and Sen revealed that they sought intervention from then finance minister Pranab Mukherjee to stall a SEBI enquiry into the chit fund scam involving the Saradha group of companies.
The court, however, didn’t find any legally admissible evidence backing this claim.
Even the ED’s charge of Sen paying for the advocate’s flight tickets and stay at a 5-star hotel in Kolkata wasn’t taken cognizance. “When a lawyer is invited to any place as a part of professional relationship, the clients pay the fees of air ticket, hotel charges, etc., which is also not unusual to sense anything foul,” the judge observed.
“To my understanding, no money or property by itself is tainted but if the money or property is derived from any illicit source or activities with such animus or mens rea which constitute an offence under any of the listed offences of the schedules of the Act, 2002, the same will attract the offence of money laundering.”
The ED had first issued summons to Nalini Chidambaram in September 2016 to appear before its office in Kolkata as a witness in the Saradha case. Nalini had skipped multiple summons and approached both the Madras High Court and then the Supreme Court for relief. The counsel for Nalini had alleged that the summons were “politically motivated to damage her reputation.”
(Edited by Tony Rai)