ED slaps big fine, doesn’t know how to recover it

The Enforcement Directorate has imposed penalties amounting to crores of rupees on the accused in the Parliament attack and Red Fort shoot-o...

The Enforcement Directorate has imposed penalties amounting to crores of rupees on the accused in the Parliament attack and Red Fort shoot-out cases under the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA) but admits that recovery will be tough.

The main accused in the Parliament attack case had been convicted in December 2002, but it was only last week that the ED imposed “personal penalties” on Mohammed Afzal and Shaukat Hussain Guru amounting to over Rs 5 crore for hawala transactions. The ED by its adjudication of June 11 also ordered confiscation of Rs 10 lakh seized from them. They are in Tihar jail.

Adjudicating officer Ashok Arya had imposed a penalty of Rs 3.9 crore on Afzal for hawala dealings of Rs 70 lakh and Rs 60 lakh. Shaukat was penalised Rs 1.5 crore for dealings of Rs 50 lakh. As per FEMA rules, the accused is to be imposed a penalty three times that of the dealing.

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The hawala dealings were revealed after interrogation of the duo while in Tihar by Chief Enforcement Officer R.K. Ajmani in 2002. They had also disclosed that the Rs 10 lakh recovered was given by Mohammed, the Pakistani terrorist killed in the attack.

Last month, the ED had imposed personal penalties totalling Rs 1.96 crore on the main accused in the Red Fort shootout, LeT militant Mohammed Arif alias Ashfaq Ahmed and Sher Zaman.

Can the penalty can actually be recovered? R N Das, Director of ED, said: ‘‘When FERA was in existence, the accused could be prosecuted for non-payment of the penalty. ’’ With FEMA, which does not involve any criminal proceedings, ‘‘the only course left to us is to identify his assets and recover it from the property.’’

While attachment of property is possible for an Indian national, ‘‘the problem arises when we need to recover the penalty from a Pakistani national’’ says Das.

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