Prosecution under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act is maintainable against parties facilitating money laundering, even if not charged in the predicate offence, thereby affirming the distinctiveness of the PMLA offences.

1. Seeking to quash the proceedings in C.C. No. 62 of 2016 on the file of the Special Court constituted u/s.43(1) of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002 [Principal Sessions Judge], Chennai, the present petition has been filed.

2. At the outset, it may be necessary to state that in a prosecution under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002 [hereinafter referred to as the 'PMLA'], there will invariably be two sets of accused viz., one in the predicate offence and other in the prosecution launched by the Enforcement Directorate. Therefore, in order to avoid confusion, we are referring to the rank of the accused as set out in the impugned complaint in C.C. No. 62 of 2016 that has been filed by the Enforcement Directorate.

3. The minimum facts that are required for deciding this quash petition are as under:
3.1. One G. Srinivasan [A1] and R. Manoharan [A2] entered into a criminal conspiracy to cheat M/s. Global Trade Finance Limited [hereinafter referred to as 'GTFL'], a subsidiary of Global Trust Bank, pursuant to which, R. Manoharan [A2], in collusion with S. Arivarasu [A5], Manager of GTFL, applied for a loan with fake documents. S. Arivarasu [A5] sanctioned a loan of Rs.15 crores on 16.05.2008 to a shell company by name M/s. Bhagavthi Textile Mills [in short 'BTM'] purportedly owned by R. Manoharan [A2], which was actually siphoned off by G. Srinivasan [A1].
3.2. Out of the said sum of Rs.15 crores so siphoned off, G. Srinivasan [A1] used Rs.1.07 crores to purchase 166 acres of land in Pudukottai Village in the names of P. Venkatachalapathy [A4], P. Rajendran [A6] and K. Vignesh [A7] from K. Gunasekaran, R. Sivakumar, Chinnakkannu and G. Selvarani through various documents. The details of the sale deeds under which the lands were purchased with the money provided by G. Srinivasan [A1] to the buyers viz., P. Venkatachalapathy [A4], P. Rajendran [A6] and K. Vignesh [A7] have been set out in paragraph No. 6.3 of the impugned complaint. The said P. Venkatachalapathy [A4], P. Rajendran [A6] and K. Vignesh [A7] gave a Power of Attorney in September 2009 to one R. Ayyappan in respect of the lands that were purchased by them with the funds provided by G. Srinivasan [A1]. K. Gunaseelan [A8] had purchased lands measuring 166 acres from P. Venkatachalapathy [A4], P. Rajendran [A6] and K. Vignesh [A7] through their power agent R. Ayyappan in February 2010. Thereafter, K. Gunaseelan [A8] sold those lands to S. Palanichamy [A9], C. Chellamuthu [A10], K. Kalimuthu [A11], V. Kuppusamy [A12], R. Natarajan [A13] and V. Nattuthurai [A14], as could be seen from the chart given in paragraph No. 6.6 of the impugned complaint.
3.3. Reverting to the loan of Rs.15 crores that was obtained by BTM, as stated supra, it was found that G. Srinivasan [A1] and R. Manoharan [A2] had created fake documents in league with S. Arivarasu [A5], Manager of GTFL for obtaining loan.
3.4. While this being so, GTFL was merged with State Bank of India and during reconciliation of the accounts, it was found that R. Manoharan[A2] obtained the loan by producing fraudulent documents.
3.5. Therefore, on a complaint given by the State Bank of India, the CBI registered a case in Crime No. RC - 9(E) / 2010 on 07.10.2010 and after completing the investigation, filed a final report in C.C. No. 6 of 2011 in the Special Court for CBI cases, Coimbatore, for the offences u/s. 120 - B r/w 420, 467 and 471 IPC and S.13 of the Prevention of Corruption Act against G. Srinivasan [A1] and others, in which P. Rajendran [A6] herein is not an accused. Since the CBI case disclosed the commission of a 'scheduled offence' under the PMLA, the Enforcement Directorate registered