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The lawyers for AAP minister Satyendar Jain Tuesday said during his bail hearing that they cannot understand who has been cheated in the Enforcement Directorate case against him, to which a Delhi judge remarked that “companies which were cheated then laundered the same money”.
Even though Jain’s lawyers completed their rebuttal, the ED sought another date to make further arguments, to which Jain’s lawyers alleged that the agency was “buying time and this will become an unending process”. The court will hear further arguments on September 15.
On the last date of hearing, Special Judge Geetanjli Goel had asked the Enforcement Directorate why it went beyond the CBI case by investigating alleged proceeds of crime not mentioned in their chargesheet. It also asked for an explanation on what the criminality in this case was and remarked at one point that the companies said to be cheated by the AAP leader were also made accused in the case.
During Tuesday’s hearing, senior advocate N Hariharan, appearing on behalf of Jain, argued that the AAP leader was “not a shareholder, never a majority shareholder. The money from Kolkata never accrued to any one of us; shares were transferred to the account of Vaibhav and Ankush, what do we have to do with it?”
Hariharan then told the court that he does not understand how accommodation entries amounted to proceeds of crime, and said: “We can’t understand who is cheated?”
The judge, while talking about the ED case, said, “Companies which were cheated then laundered the same money.”
Hariharan told the court this was a “baffling question”, and that as per a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), Jain’s services were limited to “providing architectural services, carry out due diligence, be responsible for construction and design”.
Meanwhile, the defence counsel for Ankush and Vaibhav Jain told the court that the ED was “not clear about the proceeds of crime”.
“They say it is a disproportionate assets (DA) case, they say it is a conspiracy case, they say it is cheating. They don’t understand conspiracy. ED can’t say it is cheating or conspiracy. They have to show it is money laundering,” their lawyer argued.
The ED lawyers had argued in court that the accused, Vaibhav Jain and Ankush Jain, were making an attempt to “change this case to an income tax evasion alone as they are trying to save one person”.
The ED had arrested Jain in a money laundering case based on a CBI FIR lodged against him in 2017 under the Prevention of Corruption Act, under which he was accused of having laundered money through four companies allegedly linked to him.
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