Telangana high court order puts question mark over ED attachments | Hyderabad News

HYDERABAD: In an interim order that may result in more litigation over cases overseen by the Enforcement Directorate (ED), a division bench of the Telangana high court has stayed the proceedings against Bangalore-based Indus Viva Health Sciences company currently being heard by the adjudicating authority under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).
The petitioner has challenged the ability of the adjudicating authority to come to a valid decision as it was working without the full quorum.
The ED had attached the assets of the company in cases related to multi-level marketing and is waiting for the attachment to be confirmed by the adjudicating authority.
A bench of Chief Justice Ujjal Bhuyan and Justice C V Bhaskar Reddy heard the plea filed by CEO Abhilash Thomas and found prima facie force in the argument of his
counsel Mayank Jain who contended that the adjudicating authority under PMLA should be a bench and not merely a single officer with no judicial experience.
"An adjudicating authority confirms or rejects attachments made by ED. His actions will have penal consequences for parties involved. Hence, the adjudicating authority must comprise at least two members. One should be a member (judicial) and the other should be a member technical. In the current case, the chairman of the adjudicating authority (non-judicial member) is hearing the case and there is no judicial member. In fact, a non-judicial member cannot become chairman," Jain said.
The bench, however, said that it was only staying the proceedings before the adjudicating authority and not the attachments for now. But all the orders passed by the adjudicating authority are now under a cloud and are likely to be challenged in future on grounds of lack of quorum.