Srinagar- The Act of mortgaging the property with the Bank for securing the loan cannot by any stretch of imagination be termed as money-laundering, the High Court of J&K and Ladakh has held.
“…in order to constitute an offence of money-laundering as defined under Section 3 (of the Prevention of MoneyLaundering Act, 2002), the most important thing is that there must be an activity connected with the “proceeds of crime”, which proceeds of crime in terms of the aforesaid definition would mean any property derived or obtained directly or indirectly by any person as a result of criminal activity relating to a scheduled offence or the value of any such property,” a bench of Justice Javed Iqbal Wani said.
“Thus, in order to constitute an offence under Section 3 of PMLA, Section 2(1)(u) is to be read together with Section 3 of PMLA to find out whether the ingredients of the offence of money-laundering are made out or not.”
When read so, the court said, the offence of money-laundering can be said to have been committed by fulfilment of following conditions: i. Scheduled offence must have been committed; ii. Commission of scheduled offence must have resulted in some “proceeds of crime”; iii. Person accused of money-laundering must have indulged in an activity connected with such “proceeds of crime”.
“It needs to be mentioned here that the activity connected with the “proceeds of crime” attributed to an accused must be the voluntary act of the accused.”
