The appellate tribunal under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act has dismissed an appeal by Parliamentarian Karti P. Chidambaram, affirming the attachment of his assets by the Enforcement Directorate. The decision centres on the question of whether the agency’s filing of the prosecution complaint beyond the statutory 365-day period after confirmation of attachment was invalid. The bench found that the delay was covered by the Supreme Court’s limitation-exclusion orders during the Covid-19 era and therefore upheld the asset-seizure order.
The attached properties include a 50 per cent stake in a prime residence at Jor Bagh, New Delhi, valued at approximately ₹16 crore as declared by Chidambaram, and several bank accounts with balances in the region of ₹62 lakh to ₹93 lakh each. The provisional attachment order was issued on 10 October 2018, and the adjudicating authority confirmed the attachment on 29 March 2019. When the complaint was filed on 1 June 2020, the defence argued that the delay breached Section 8 of the PMLA, which mandates a complaint must be filed within 365 days of confirmation. The tribunal’s two-member bench concluded that the period from 15 March 2020 to 28 February 2022 had been excluded from limitation under the Supreme Court’s December 2021 order and thus the complaint filing was valid despite being beyond 365 days. The bench further clarified that while the attachment stands, the agency may take physical possession of the property only for “exceptional reasons” in line with the Supreme Court’s precedent in Vijay Madanlal Choudhary & Ors. v. Union of India.
During the hearing, counsel for Chidambaram contended that the attachment was void because the agency lost the right to hold assets once the complaint was delayed. They leaned on earlier tribunal rulings to insist that extension of limitation does not apply to executive action such as complaint-filing. The Enforcement Directorate’s team countered that the national lockdown and court closures had made timely investigation and filing impossible. They pointed to the Supreme Court’s suo moto institution of limitation extension as justification. In its order, the tribunal observed that “the enormity of the situation for the Investigating Officer to have completed the investigation during the period of lockdown, when he was not even authorised to visit the witnesses or record their statements, needs to be appreciated.” The tribunal also noted that the exclusion order’s coverage was “wide enough to allow the filing of the prosecution complaint … beyond 365 days of the passing of the impugned order.”
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