The Sindh High Court has granted bail to a woman in a money laundering case. The applicant, Ayesha Hamid, was booked by the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) for cheating and money laundering under the Foreign Exchange Regulation Act, 1947.
The applicant’s counsel submitted that she was involved in an online business and was a registered taxpayer. However, due to speedy credit and debit entries in the bank account, the bank manager sent a letter to the FIA for inquiry.
He submitted that the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) issued a show cause notice for Rs241,787,491, which was duly answered by the applicant and consequently no further action was taken.
The SHC was informed that the FBR had neither opened the audit nor attached such amount on account of tax liability. An assistant attorney general submitted that the bail of applicant was earlier dismissed with a cogent reason and subsequently the present bail application had no merits on the same ground. The challan had been submitted before the trial court and the matter was ripe for evidence.
A single bench of the high court headed by Justice Syed Fiaz ul Hasan Shah after hearing the arguments of the counsel observed that the FIA State Bank Circle had directly registered an FIR for money laundering while reading predicate offences of the Section 420 (fraud) provisions of the Foreign Exchange Regulation Act, 1947, and its amended provisions, Sections 4, 5, 8 and 23, had been included with the offence of Anti-Money Laundering Act, 2010, which was against the concept of the money laundering framed by the legislature.
The SHC observed that the anti-money law constituted a special and overriding statutory regime. The offence of money laundering was distinct from the predicate offence, required registration of a separate FIR, and was not barred by the doctrine against second FIRs.
The high court observed that the FIA investigation officer had stated that some of the amount had been transmitted abroad, however, the copy of charge sheet already available on record showed that column 4 of the case property was nil, which meant that the FIA had not recovered any case property or proceed of crime despite taking remand of the applicant.
The SHC observed that the show cause notice issued by the FBR with regard to such money, which was the subject matter of the present case, had been well explained by the applicant before the concerned forum with regard to its legitimacy for the tax purposes.
The high court observed that even the FBR was empowered to refer the matter for the money laundering to the FIA, which investigated money laundering. The bench observed that in the present case, the FBR had not referred the matter to the FIA to probe the money laundering and only the bank officer in compliance with the provisions of Section 7 of the Anti-Money Laundering Act 2010, and AML and TF Regulation 2022, had referred the matter by raising STR through the FMU financial intelligence.
The high court observed that the case was one within the purview of a further inquiry in view of the fact that the applicant was registered with the FBR individually herself and through her proprietorship concern and said the FBR was satisfied with regard to money transactions of the applicant and the same could not be considered as laundered unless the prosecution brought predicate offence separately.
The SHC observed that the applicant was no more required for the purposes of investigation and no apprehension was shown by the prosecution that in case she was released on bail, she would threaten prosecution witnesses or damage the evidential record. The court granted bail to the applicant against a surety of Rs5 million.
