Rs 18,000 crore returned to banks from Mallya, others: Centre

New Delhi: An amount of Rs 18,000 crore has been returned to banks from fugitive tycoons Vijay Mallya, Nirav Modi and Mehul Choksi, the Union government has told the Supreme Court, which is hearing a batch of petitions challenging the wide scope of powers given to the Enforcement Directorate in connection with the money laundering cases. In India, 4,700 PMLA cases are being investigated by the Enforcement Directorate and the total proceeds of crimes pending before the court amounts to Rs 67,000 crore, the government said.

Appearing for the Centre, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta cited the figures to reflect how a large sum of money is still stuck and not crossing recovery stage due to the protection being granted by courts.

"Some of the people who have left the country duping thousands of crores are getting protection of the courts. So far, a tune of ₹ 67000 crores is held up by the Courts by granting non-coercive actions," he said.

Over the last weeks, several senior advocates, including Kapil Sibal, Abhishek Manu Singhvi and Mukul Rohatgi have made submissions in the Supreme Court, pointing to potential misuse of the recent amendments to the Prevention of Money Laundering Act or PMLA.

The law has been criticised over a range of issues -- stringent bail conditions, non-communication of grounds of arrest, arrest of persons without supply of ECIR (parallel to a First Information Report filed by the police), the broadening of the definition of money laundering, proceeds of crime, and statements given by accused during investigation made admissible as evidence during trial.

A very small number of cases are being taken up for investigation under the PMLA in India, compared to the situation abroad, the Centre told a bench of Justices AM Khanwilkar, Dinesh Maheshwari and CT Ravikumar.

As examples, the Centre cited the UK, where 7,900 cases have been filed under the Money Laundering Act in a year, the US (1,532), China (4,691), Austria (1,036), Hongkong (1,823), Belgium (1,862) and Russia (2,764).