The Madras High Court on Wednesday called for all the records connected to a 22-year-old Foreign Exchange Regulation Act (FERA) case pending against Amma Makkal Munnetra Kazhagam (AMMK) leader and R.K. Nagar MLA T.T.V. Dhinakaran before an economic offences court at Egmore here.
Justice RMT. Teekaa Raman passed the order after senior counsel B. Kumar, representing Mr. Dhinakaran, accused additional chief metropolitan magistrate (Economic Offences - II) of having disobeyed the High Court’s order to conduct joint trial of two cases which were actually part of the same transaction.
Counsel said the High Court would be able to appreciate his contentions better after perusing the docket orders passed by the magistrate. Accepting his submissions, the judge directed the High Court Registry to call for the records from the lower court and place them before him on July 24.
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In the meantime, he also extended an interim stay of the trial before the lower court. According to the petitioner, the Directorate of Enforcement had initially filed a private complaint before the magistrate in 1996 with respect to investments made by him in a company incorporated in the British Virgin Islands in 1994.
According to the prosecution, he was the director of a company named Dipper Investments, which had maintained an account with Barclays Bank in the U.K. In 1994, 21 cheques totalling $1,04,93,313 were deposited into the bank account of the said company and hence the prosecution was launched on charges of unauthorised transfer.
After obtaining permission from the lower court to conduct further investigation in the case, the ED filed a fresh chargesheet accusing the petitioner of having acquired foreign exchange of $36,36,000 and £1 lakh during 1994-95 from unauthorised dealers without the Reserve Bank of India’s permission.
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He claimed that filing of such a fresh chargesheet was erroneous and that only an additional or supplementary chargesheet ought to have been filed by the prosecuting agency.