Mumbai Mirror Bureau     

Posted On Saturday, March 12, 2011 at 03:46:32 AM

http://www.mumbaimirror.com/article/2/20110312201103120346323209b94469c/%E2%80%98Tax-evader%E2%80%99-Hasan-Ali-humbles-ED-walks-a-free-man.html

The Enforcement Directorate’s (ED) embarrassment was complete on Friday when a local court rejected its plea seeking Hasan Ali’s remand for custodial interrogation, and granted him bail after observing that the contents of some of its “confidential” documents were “available on Wikipedia”. Pune-based stud farm owner Ali has been accused of money laundering.

Principal Sessions Court Judge M L Tahaliyani while rejecting the agency's application for 14-day custodial interrogation of the Ali, 53, observed it had failed to back its charges in the case under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).

“As such in the first place, ED has not been able to show any of the scheduled offences under the provisions of PMLA for an offence to be listed under the Act.

I am not satisfied. No material evidence has been presented by the ED that shows any scheduled offence has been committed by Ali,” Tahaliyani observed, grating conditional bail to Ali based on an oral application made by his counsel I P Bagaria.

ED’s counsel Rajeev Awasthi prayed that the court order rejecting Ali’s custody be stayed for two days so that the ED could prepare for its appeal. However, Tahaliyani after hearing Awasthi said that ED’s plea was “unreasonable”.

The ED, which arrested Ali on Monday after being pulled up by the Supreme Court for its failure to ensure his custodial interrogation, was left red-faced as the judge said, “Despite its arguments, the ED has not been able to demonstrate that a scheduled offence has been committed in the first place.” The ED said it will challenge the order.

About the “confidential” documents submitted by the agency in a sealed cover while seeking Ali's remand, the judge said, “It was noticed by me that contents of some of the documents were available on Wikipedia.

It appears (from the documents) that two accounts of Ali were never operational and not funded as the bank was not satisfied with credentials of the accused.” Tahaliyani barred Ali from leaving the city for the next five days during which he would have to report to ED office every day.

The court also rejected the argument that $700,000 was transferred from Ali's Sarasin Bank account in Switzerland to the account of S K financial Services, based in the United Kingdom maintained by Barclays Bank through Citi Bank in New York, and accepted the defence contention that the account holder was one H A ‘K A H N ‘and not ‘Khan’.

On the charge that Ali had hoarded $ billion in UBS, Switzerland the bank has already denied it the court said there was no material to show that money was transferred to UBS.

“After going through the documents, I conclude that if the ED did not believe the genuineness of the communication of UBS Bank, it should have taken steps to enquire the matter.

This has not been properly investigated,” the judge said. While maintaining that some of the documents furnished by the ED were contradictory, the court observed that none of them came from authenticated sources and the agency had not verified their genuineness.

“What is alleged is that the passport was obtained (by Ali) through forged documents. It is obvious that the amounts stated to be lying in banks were not proceeds from crime allegedly done by obtaining passport,” Tahaliyani remarked, “This is stretching too far to fit in the scheme of provisions under PMLA.”

ED counsel Awasthi said, “We have evidence (to prove Ali's culpability in money laundering) but probably the court failed to appreciate those. We will appeal before a superior court.”