The Madras High Court on Thursday advised the Directorate of Enforcement (ED) to obtain further time from the Bombay High Court to complete adjudication proceedings initiated against the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) in 2011 for alleged violation of the provisions of Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA) of 1999 during the Indian Premier League (IPL) season 2 conducted in South Africa in 2009.
Justice S.M. Subramaniam told Special Public Prosecutor (SPP) for ED cases G. Hema that it would be better if the ED obtains time beyond May 31 from the Bombay High Court where BCCI’s former vice-president Lalit Kumar Modi, presently residing in London, had filed a case than asking the Madras High Court to clarify an interim order passed last year in a writ petition filed here by the board’s former secretary N. Srinivasan.
Earlier, senior counsel P.R. Raman, representing Mr. Srinivasan, insisted that he should be given an opportunity of hearing if the court decides to clarify the interim order as requested by the ED. Agreeing with him, the judge said the case could not be heard at length during the summer vacation court sitting, and therefore, the only option before the directorate would be to get the time limit fixed by the Bombay High Court extended.
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In her submissions, the SPP stated that the ED officials in Mumbai had initiated the FEMA proceedings against BCCI in 2011 and issued notices to its then top officials who included former honorary president Shasank Manohar, M.P. Pandove, Ratnakar Shetty, Prasanna Kannan and Sunder Raman with respect to transfer of Indian foreign exchange totalling $4,98,62,799 to Cricket South Africa without the permission of the Reserve Bank of India.
Subsequently, in 2015, Mr. Modi filed a writ petition in the Bombay High Court seeking permission for his lawyer to cross examine the witnesses whose statements had been recorded by the ED officials under Section 37 of FEMA. He also sought a direction to the ED to issue summons to Mr. Srinivasan, Mr. Kannan, Mr. Raman, Chirayu Amin, Mr. Manohar, Mr. Shetty, Ravi Shankar Shastri, Mr. Pandove and Peter Griffith for their cross examination.
Disposing of the case on January 30 this year, a Division Bench of Justices S.C. Dharmadhikari and Bharati H. Dangre had expressed shock over the proceedings pending since November 2011 and ordered that the entire adjudication should be completed before May 31 after cross examining the requisite witnesses. It was also made clear that no extension of time would be granted to the ED under any circumstances for completing the process.
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In the meantime, Mr. Srinivasan too had filed a writ petition in the Madras High Court in 2016. While passing an interim order in the case on October 26 last year, a single judge of the High Court recorded the submission of the ED that it would not precipitate the matter until the case was heard on November 27, 2017. “But after October 26, the case was not listed at all for hearing and by misinterpreting the interim order, the petitioner is now not willing to cooperate with the proceedings,” the SPP said and urged the court to clarify that the order would not preclude the ED from summoning the petitioner.