HC gives ED free hand to probe Tasmac muddle

STATING that the allegations and complaint against the Tamil Nadu State Marketing Corporation (Tasmac) are 'grave in nature' and warrants 'deeper investigation', the Madras High Court on Wednesday cleared the decks for the ED to proceed with the probe by dismissing the petitions filed by Tasmac and the state government against the raids conducted on the retail liquor business entity.

- R SIVAKUMAR @ Chennai

A bench of Justices S M Subramaniam and K Rajasekar negated the contentions raised by the petitioners, including non-furnishing of "reasons to believe" the commission of the offence, and the FIRs relied upon by the agency for proceeding under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), violations of principles of federalism, political motive and violation of human rights of employees, particularly women.

The court said the fact that ED had recorded the reasons to believe the commission of the offence of generating proceeds of crime in writing, as explicitly mandated under Section 17 of PMLA, on information in possession is sufficient to conduct search. Sufficiency of adequacy of the information cannot be gone into by the court at this stage, it said.