New Delhi, May 2 (PTI) Two significant legal issues have led to "widespread" litigation and stay orders on the final confirmation of assets worth more than Rs 50,000 crore that were provisionally attached by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) under the anti-money laundering law, according to a latest report.

The federal probe agency is empowered to provisionally attach properties during investigation under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) that are suspected to be "proceeds of crime". Such a provisional order has to be confirmed by the Adjudicating Authority of the said law within 180 days of its issuance.

The ED, since the PMLA came into effect in 2005, has attached assets worth Rs 1.55 lakh crore, of which properties valued at Rs 1.07 crore have been confirmed by the Adjudicating Authority by the end of the 2024-25 financial year.

The "apparent gap" between the total value of proceeds of crime attached by the ED (Rs 1,54,594 crore) and the value confirmed by the Adjudicating Authority (Rs 1,06,730 crore) is primarily attributable to "legal impediments" currently under judicial consideration, the agency has said in its first-ever independent annual report (2024-25 fiscal).

Data furnished in the report said the ED issued a total of 2,789 attachment orders, of which 2,220 were confirmed by the authority (between 2005 and 2025).

It said two "significant" legal issues have led to "widespread" litigation and consequent stay orders on proceedings before the authority.

The first issue, the report said, was the question of "coram non judice", which means whether a confirmation order can be validly passed by a single member in the absence of a full quorum of the authority, particularly where no judicial member is present.

This issue has led to stay orders in more than 100 matters across high courts and the Supreme Court, thereby freezing proceeds of crime worth Rs 3,803.91 crore, it said.

The Adjudicating Authority is a three-member body with a chairperson and one member with experience in the field of law (member-judicial) and another with stints in administration, finance or accountancy.

The second legal "hurdle", according to the report, relates to the interpretation of the 180-day time limit for confirmation of the provisional attachment orders issued by the ED during "extraordinary" situations like the COVID-19 pandemic.

A batch of 119 petitions before the Delhi High Court and similar matters before the Supreme Court involve proceeds of crime worth Rs 49,620 crore, the report said.

The total figures of attachment done and approved, as provided in the report, do not match as "some orders are stayed" even after confirmation by the authority, it said.

The report also said the agency is suffering from acute manpower shortage as it handles thousands of cases under the PMLA, the Fugitive Economic Offenders Act (FEOA) and the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA).

It said there has been no cadre review of the agency for the last 14 years, an exercise that should ideally be carried out every five years.

The agency was sanctioned a strength of 745 in 2006 and after a cadre restructuring in 2011, its manpower was enhanced to 2,063. However, certain posts were abolished in 2023, leaving the current strength of the organisation under the Union finance ministry at 2,030.

"In the case of ED, there has been an exponential increase in the number of cases being investigated and surge in litigation. Moreover, additional responsibility was entrusted to it in 2018 to enforce FEOA without corresponding augmentation of manpower," the report said.

It said global anti-money laundering body FATF, in its 2024 report on India, has said that there is "a need to increase the resourcing of ED given the size and risks of the country and the expected volume and complexity of money-laundering investigations and prosecution".

The report said the cadre-restructuring proposal of the ED is "under consideration" of the finance ministry.

Talking about FEMA cases, the report said the ED initiated a total of 40,044 cases under this civil law that was enacted in 1999 and came into effect from June 2000.

Of these, 18,425 (about 46 per cent) cases have been closed and a total of 8,969 show-cause notices, post investigation, have been issued, out of which 7,279 (81 per cent) have been adjudicated upon or have reached finality.

The total penalty levied through the investigation and adjudication of the cases during the 2024-25 fiscal was Rs 5,238 crore, the report said.

It said the agency got 14 persons declared as fugitive economic offenders by the end of 2024-25, including liquor baron Vijay Mallya and diamond trader Nirav Modi, while the action has led one person (Sona Bansal) to return to the country and join prosecution.

FEOA proceedings were abated against one person, Atul Bansal, due to his death, while it is pending before courts for businessman Mehul Choksi and Mahadev betting-app promoter duo Sourabh Chandrakar and Ravi Uppal, the report said.

The FEOA is aimed at bringing to justice those who have left India in order to evade the clutches of law after committing fraud with a benchmark value of over Rs 100 crore.

The report also furnished a "fact-based perspective", saying the ED achieved a conviction rate of 93.6 per cent in money-laundering cases as by the end of the last fiscal, 47 such cases were disposed of by courts, leading to the conviction of 100 individuals. Three cases resulted in acquittals.

"It is pertinent to note that the conviction rate is a measure of outcomes in disposed cases and not a ratio of convictions to total number of ongoing investigations or pending trials," it said.

The report highlighted that while the ED filed a total of 7,771 ECIRs (enforcement case information reports) between 2005 and 2025, it filed prosecution complaints in only 1,739 cases. The report did not say how many ECIRs, the ED equivalent of a police FIR, were clubbed or closed. PTI NES RC