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Synopsis

The Delhi High Court on Tuesday issued notice to NewsClick's founder and editor-in-chief Prabir Purkayastha in the plea filed by Delhi Police's Economic Offence Wing (EOW) seeking directions to vacate the interim order asking it to not take "any coercive action" him. 

The bench of Justice Saurabh Banerjee issued notice in the matter and sought Prabir Purkayastha's response on the plea. 

On July 7, 2021, the high court had granted Purkayastha interim protection from arrest and directed him to join the investigation.

According to the EOW FIR, a case was registered under Sections 406, 420 and 120B of the IPC and an investigation was launched. During the investigation, the sleuths gathered evidence indicating criminal acts.

“The accused persons, in conspiracy with their accomplices based abroad, devised a deceitful scheme to obtain and receive funds for undertaking activities as per instructions from their foreign-based benefactors, by disguising the funds received as Foreign Direct Investment”, EOW said.

It also stated that the accused persons in furtherance of their scheme, converted their entity into a private limited company and got their valuation inflated through manipulation of the valuation criteria and process, so as to use the inflated valuation to get foreign investment purportedly in lieu of dilution of their shareholding in favour of the foreign investors.

The EOW further stated that after seeking protection from arrest, petitioner Prabir Purkayastha joined the investigation and he merely provided the balance sheet of PPK NewsClick Studio Pvt. Ltd. for the financial year 2017-2018, 2018-2019, 2019-2020 but failed to provide closures of the balance sheets to check their source of revenue, expenditures, end use of funds, FDI and fund/revenue from foreign entities.

“The petitioner or accused also failed to provide information on what kind of export services were provided by their company PPK NewsClick Studio Pvt. Ltd. to the foreign entities against the fee/remittances paid by them”, it said.

Notably, on August 11, the High Court judge had issued notice in plea by Directorate of Enforcement (ED) seeking directions to vacate the interim order while asking ED not to take "any coercive action" against PPK NewsClick Studio Private Limited, which owns a news portal NewsClick and its founder and editor-in-chief Prabir Purkayastha, in connection with a money laundering case. The court had sought their response on ED's plea within two weeks.

The agency had claimed that during the investigation, additional material had been revealed which disclosed the commission of the offence of money laundering. 

"In light of further investigation in the matter, additional material has been revealed which discloses the commission of the offence of money laundering as well as commission of scheduled offence which has been intimated to the predicate agency as well, by way of an appropriate communication u/s 66(2) of the PMLA as well. The relevant facts will be produced in a sealed cover before this Hon'ble Court during the course of hearing as it is a subject matter of ongoing investigation", the plea read. 

ED, in its plea, had stated that the plea in which interim orders of stay were passed was premature and not maintainable.

"It has been held repeatedly by the Courts including the Supreme Court that at the stage of summons, a person cannot even qualify as a person aggrieved and therefore, the Writ Petitions would not be maintainable being wholly premature", it had stated.

Case Title: Prabir Purkayastha v. State of NCT of Delhi