The Special Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) court on Saturday granted bail to Financial Technologies India Ltd (FTIL) promoter Jignesh Shah in the NSEL case. Shah was arrested in the case by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) on July 12.
According to Tushad Cooper, member of FTIL's legal team, the defence, while seeking Shah's bail, had argued before the court that Shah's arrest by the ED in the alleged money laundering case was "illegal".
"We told the court that earlier the Economic Offences Wing's (EOW's) case was based on identical grounds and the HC had granted bail to Shah in that case. Also, PD Agro, one of the largest defaulters in the case, against whom the money trail was prima facie established, had secured the bail," Cooper said.
The ED had earlier claimed that as much as Rs114 crore has been laundered in the NSEL scam. The central agency, which arrested Shah, had managed to trace some dubious transactions between FTIL and its subsidiary companies.
The central agency had registered a criminal case under the PMLA in 2013 to probe the case along with the EOW.
NSEL had been facing a payment crisis as nearly 13,000 of its investors allegedly lost Rs5,600 crore after the alleged fraudulent practices adopted by Shah and others.
July 18 onwards, EOW began the process of securing FTIL's properties worth Rs2,000 crore. This effectively means that the FTIL cannot deal or do transaction of the properties as the next step would be attachment of these properties.
