Money Laundering

The Prevention of Money-Laundering Act, 2002 (PMLA) is among India’s most stringent statutes and is a special law unaffected by the new criminal codes. Money laundering under Section 3 is built on a "scheduled offence" (the predicate offence) — without proceeds of crime traceable to a scheduled offence, the PMLA edifice does not stand. The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has wide powers of summons, statements under Section 50, search, seizure, arrest under Section 19 and provisional attachment of property under Section 5. Defence is multi-layered: challenging the predicate / scheduled-offence linkage and the ECIR, testing the validity and voluntariness of Section 50 statements, defending the provisional attachment before the Adjudicating Authority within the statutory timeline, and pursuing bail under the Section 45 twin-test. The Supreme Court has, in recent years, refined these provisions — particularly bail for women, the sick, the infirm and where incarceration is prolonged. We represent individuals and corporates from the pre-investigation stage through ED proceedings, the Adjudicating Authority, the Appellate Tribunal and constitutional challenges — integrating predicate-offence strategy with statement protection and asset defence.