The Appellate Tribunal allowed the appeal and held that the...

The Appellate Tribunal allowed the appeal and held that the allocation of the coal block to the appellant company did not constitute proceeds of crime under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002 (PMLA). Although the appellant company was convicted for the scheduled offence of obtaining the coal block allocation through misrepresentation, there was no predicate offence registered or investigated regarding the flow of investments from outside investors into the company. Consequently, the Directorate could not assume or investigate such a link, being empowered only to investigate money laundering offences and not the scheduled offence itself. In the absence of a finding on the misrepresentation or fraud in attracting investments during the investigation of the predicate offence, the attempt to treat the flow of funds as proceeds of crime failed.

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