A special PMLA court on October 18 discharged actor-producer and businessman Sachin Joshi from a money laundering case related to the Omkar group of developers. The court observed that there was nothing to show that Sachin had knowledge that he and companies associated with him were dealing with proceeds of crime.
Special judge M.G. Deshpande said, “…basically prosecution complaint (chargesheet) and documents clearly show that they were never recipients of proceeds of crime”. The court also accepted Joshi’s plea citing a Supreme Court ruling that when there was no predicate offence, a PMLA case could not continue. The predicate or original offence against the accused and the firms, based on which the Enforcement Directorate registered its money laundering case, was closed in 2021. The court further added that Sachin Joshi and the companies were entitled to discharge on the grounds of parity with Omkar promoters who were granted relief on August 24, 2022. Joshi sought parity in September this year.
It may be recalled that Sachin was arrested in February 2021 and granted bail in March 2022. The special PMLA court had then observed that no prima facie case of money laundering existed against him. The ED had alleged that the promoters of Omkar group had taken Rs. 400 crore from Yes Bank to construct buildings for slum dwellers under a Slum Rehabilitation Authority scheme but had diverted the money to group companies. The agency accused Joshi of helping Omkar group to launder Rs. 87 crore. In March 2020, an FIR was registered against Babulal Varma and Kamalkishore Gupta of the Omkar group in Aurangabad for cheating. Based on the predicate offence, a case was filed against them by the ED.
The police later filed a closure report in the Aurangabad case. In 2021, the Aurangabad court accepted the closure report following which the matter was disposed of.
The special judge said that the ED “nowhere says that Sachin Joshi and companies associated with him” had even a “remote role” to play in Omkar group securing a loan of Rs. 410 crore from Yes Bank and using it as proceeds of crime. The court observed that Sachin Joshi was paid money because his name was lent to the SRA projects as a brand ambassador. It added that Sachin Joshi and his companies had in fact paid Rs. 4.85 crore by way of GST, and Rs. 2.94 crore as TDS for monies received from Omkar Realtors and Developers Pvt. Ltd. While giving Joshi a clean chit in the case, the judge said, there was no evidence to suggest that the group of companies of Joshi were only on paper “to facilitate layering and integration of proceeds of crime as alleged in the complaint”.