The government has told the Supreme Court that fugitive tycoons Vijay Mallya, Nirav Modi, and Mehul Choksi have paid Rs 18,000 crore to banks. The court is considering a series of petitions challenging the Enforcement Directorate’s broad powers in money laundering cases.

Several top counsels, including Kapil Sibal, Abhishek Manu Singhvi, and Mukul Rohatgi, have filed comments to the Supreme Court in recent weeks regarding the possible misuse of recent modifications to the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, or PMLA.

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The law has been criticised for a number of issues, including stringent bail conditions, failure to communicate the grounds for arrest, arresting people without providing an ECIR (in addition to a First Information Report filed by the police), broadening the definition of money laundering, proceeds of crime, and making statements given by accused during investigation admissible as evidence during the trial.

In India, a relatively limited number of cases are being investigated under the PMLA, compared to the situation elsewhere, the Centre told a bench of Justices AM Khanwilkar, Dinesh Maheshwari, and CT Ravikumar.

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The Centre mentioned the United Kingdom, where 7,900 cases were brought under the Money Laundering Act in a single year, the United States (1,532), China (4,691), Austria (1,036), Hong Kong (1,823), Belgium (1,862), and Russia (2,764) as examples.

The Enforcement Directorate is investigating 4,700 PMLA cases in India, and the total proceeds of crime pending before the court totals Rs 67,000 crores, according to the Centre.

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The number of cases brought up for inquiry each year over the previous five years has ranged from 111 in 2015-16 to 981 in 2020-21, according to the Centre. For such offences, 33 lakh FIRs have been lodged in the last five years (from 2016-17 to 2020-21). However, just 2,086 instances were taken up for inquiry, according to the Centre.