SC to hear ex-minister Satyendra Jain’s bail plea in ED case on May 26

NEW DELHI:  The Supreme Court will hear on Friday a plea filed by Delhi’s former Health Minister, Satyendra Jain, seeking bail in a money laundering case. Jain’s plea was mentioned by Senior Advocate AM Singhvi before the vacation bench of Justices Aniruddha Bose and Sanjay Karol on Monday.

On May 18, the top court had sought the response of the Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Jain’s plea.   It had issued notice to the ED and granted liberty to Jain to move before the vacation bench for relief. Jain was arrested by the ED in a money laundering case based on an FIR lodged by the Central Bureau of Investigation against the former Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader in 2017 under the Prevention of Corruption Act.

He is accused of having laundered money through four companies allegedly linked to him and has been in custody since May last year after the attachment of properties worth `4.81 crore by the ED. The money belonged to the five companies. A bench of Justices

AS Bopanna and Hima Kohli had sought a response from the Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Thursday.  Jain has challenged the Delhi High Court’s April 6 order, which refused to grant him bail, noting that it did not find any illegality in the rejection of his bail pleas by the trial court on November 17, 2022.

Noting that Jain is an influential person and has the potential to tamper with the evidence, as indicated by his conduct during custody, High Court Judge Justice Dinesh Kumar Sharma had said, “In order to grant bail, there has to be substantial probable cause for first believing that the accused is not guilty of the offence.”

Referring to the testimonies, the bench stated in its order, “Jain is the conceptualizer, visualizer, and executor of the entire operation, and he was aided and abetted by Vaibhav Jain and Ankush Jain.
“The plea of Satyendar Kumar Jain that he was not found in physical possession of any property needs to be rejected outright, as for the offence of money laundering, physical possession of the proceeds of crime is not necessary.

Similarly, the fact that the acquired shares were transferred back to Vaibhav Jain and Ankush Jain will also make no difference, as it may again be done to conceal the proceeds of crime or project them as untainted money. The companies are controlled and managed by Satyendar Jain, and the ‘constant changing pattern’ of shareholding clearly indicates that he was indirectly controlling the company affairs,” the bench said in its order.