Under fire, ED says: High conviction rate, politicians are accused in 3% cases

The ED has based its conviction data on the fact that trial has been completed in 25 cases so far, of which 24 cases have ended in conviction with 45 people being declared guilty of money laundering.

According to the data, since 2005, when the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) came into force, the ED has registered 5,906 cases (till January 31, 2023). However, prosecution complaints (equivalent to a chargesheet) have been filed in only 1,142 (19 per cent) cases. Also, only 62 per cent of all the attached assets have been confirmed by the adjudicating  authority, with the rest still pending adjudication.

The claim on conviction rate makes the ED the best performing central agency – the National Investigation Agency (NIA) claims a conviction rate of 94 per cent, while the CBI claims to have a conviction rate of 68 per cent.

The data shows that searches were conducted in only 531 cases, i.e. 8.99 per cent of the total cases. With a total of 4,954 search operations, an average of about 10 searches were conducted in each case.

The ED has said that it has registered 176 cases of money laundering against incumbent and former MPs, MLAs and MLCs, which translates to 2.98 per cent of the total cases.

In September last year, The Indian Express had reported that 95 per cent of all prominent politicians who faced ED action since 2014 were from the Opposition. ED officials had then claimed that since its cases follow those registered by other agencies, it could not be accused of bias.

According to the ED data, the agency had arrested 513 people till January 31, and attached properties worth over Rs 1.15 lakh crore through 1,919 provisional attachment orders. Of these, assets worth over Rs 15,600 crore have been confiscated so far.

ED sources said the narrative of low conviction rate has been created by Opposition leaders, who have compared its convictions to the total number of cases registered. “That is not how conviction rate is calculated. How can you claim failure in a case which, say, was registered yesterday or whose trial is still going on? The conviction rate is calculated based on the number of cases in which trial has been completed,” said an ED official.

Meanwhile, amid allegations of inaction on the Adani issue, an ED official said: “We cannot register a case on our own. We only follow other agencies as PMLA requires a predicate offence to be registered. If the CBI registers a case on the Adani issue, we will follow suit.”