A SPECIAL court for Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) on Saturday convicted and sentenced retired IAS officer Pradeep Sharma to five years’ rigorous imprisonment in a case of money laundering in lieu of allotment of government land at cheap valuation to Welspun India Ltd and its group of companies in Varshmedi village of Anjar Taluka in Bhuj, while Sharma, now 71, served as the Kutch District Collector and chairman of the District Land Pricing Committee (DLPC) from 2003 to 2006.
The court also rejected a plea by Sharma’s counsel to allow the sentences to run concurrently, saying that the court could “not find any justifiable reason to direct concurrency” of the sentence with a previous sentence handed down to him by the PMLA court for another offence in January this year. The court has also imposed a fine of Rs 50,000 on Sharma.
Special PMLA judge K M Sojitra convicted Sharma under sections of the Act on the basis of a criminal case registered against him by the Ahmedabad zonal office of the Enforcement Directorate in March 2012. Sharma was arrested first in July 2016 and released on bail in March 2018 in the case. The court stated, “The court has come to the conclusion that the accused has committed the offence of money laundering… the prosecution has been able to prove the charge…”
Rejecting the arguments of Sharma’s defence lawyers for a concurrent sentencing considering his age of 71 years, the judgement states, “The accused was Collector and has indulged himself in corrupt practice for which he is convicted in schedule offence… and has also indulged in offence of money laundering… a serious offence and no leniency can be shown on the accused by passing an order that sentence shall run concurrently along with the previous conviction of schedule offence case. The same would also frustrate the very provision of Section 427 which mandates that subsequent imprisonment shall run on expiration of earlier conviction.”
Sharma’s lawyer R G Goswami said, “We had submitted that the case against Sharma dates back to the time when the PMLA Act was not in force… The ED had no sanction under Section 197 of CrPC for the complaint. The same was applied for only after the trial was completed. The ED was required to take permission from the competent authority as per Section 45 of the PMLA Act to register the complaint but no such approval was placed on record… Our submissions were not considered. We will move the High Court against the sentence.”
The ED case is based on three FIRs registered against Sharma by CID Crime, Rajkot Zone, in 2010 for illegally granting land to the Kutch-based Welspun group at “discriminatory” rates.
One of these cases allegedly granted Sharma’s wife, Shyamal, 30 per cent partnership in an associated company, while another alleged that the group had paid a mobile phone bill of Rs 2.24 lakh for a SIM card they had given Sharma for use. According to the prosecution, Sharma as the then chairman of DLDC “connived with others to allot the government land at Varshmedi in Anjar in Bhuj to M/s Welspun India Ltd” at significantly lower rates than those prescribed by the state government.
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“Specifically, the accused allotted multiple land parcels at rates ranging from Rs 15 to Rs 18 per square metre, instead of the fixed government rate of Rs 78 per square metre, thereby causing financial loss to the state government and generating proceeds of crime to the tune of Rs 1.20 crore,” the judgment notes.
The prosecution also alleges that Sharma engaged in the offence of money laundering by “concealing, possessing, projecting and claiming” that the proceeds of crime were lawful and the “modus operandi involved channelising the illegal gratification through his wife Shyamal Sharma, who was made a 30 per cent partner in M/s. Value Packaging Private Limited, a firm associated with the Welspun Group, without any initial capital investment.”
The court judgment notes that an amount of Rs 22 lakh, received in a bank account of Sharma’s wife and Rs 7.50 lakh as a goodwill payment, are alleged to be illegal gratification for extending undue favors to the Welspun Group. The prosecution also submitted that proceeds of crime were also sent to Sharma’s wife’s accounts in the US from third parties such as Ravin Jhunjhunwala and Gurnam Singh Juneja. These funds were utilised to “repay a housing loan for his Gandhinagar house and to purchase agricultural land in Dehgam, Gandhinagar” the prosecution has submitted.
The prosecution has also submitted that the land of the company Value Packaging – converted to non-agricultural land – was under the ownership of Dipika Paneervel, wife of the then Secretary in the state government. The company was to provide corrugated boxes to Welspun Ltd.
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During the course of the investigation, the ED provisionally attached Sharma’s properties, including land in Gandhinagar district and a house.
The PMLA court, on Saturday, also directed that Sharma’s properties seized by the ED during the investigation would “stand confiscated to the Central government”.
In January this year, Sharma was convicted and sentenced by the same court to five years’ rigorous imprisonment in a PMLA case registered against him by the Anti-Corruption Bureau.
