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Journalism of Courage
The Supreme Court may have thrown out FIRs filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation on the basis of inadmissible evidence, but the Enforcement Directorate (ED) last week brought the famous “Jain hawala” case back into the limelight by slapping penalties totalling a whopping Rs 30.2 crore on the main accused.
The 162-adjudication order passed on June 6 (the first in the case after the apex court handed over the case to the ED in 1995) reveals that the agency began their investigations at the point the CBI left it.
Thus while the CBI case—which rocked the country during the P V Narasimha Rao regime—ended in a whimper, the ED has succeeded in pinning the Jains to a case of massive foreign exchange violation.
Thus, besides connecting the hawala entries in the diaries totalling approximately Rs 50 crore recovered by the CBI from the office of S K Jain in 1991, the agency also managed to call for questioning the elusive foreign exchange dealers—Amir and Arif—who had been converting the foreign exchange for the Jain brothers.
The adjudication shows that S K Jain and his brothers, NK Jain and BR Jain, face a penalty of Rs 4 crore each, while their employee, J K Jain, Rs 3 crore.
A penalty of Rs 4 crore each has been imposed on foreign exchange dealers Amir and Arif. S K Jain and Amir have also been slapped with additional penalties by the ED for violations under sections of the since repealed FERA.
ED officials say the adjudication against the other hawala dealers in the case was still in progress as was the prosecution of the Jain brothers in a sessions court, also on charges of FERA violations. The criminal prosecution is at the pre-charge stage in court in the 16-year old case.
