Only 2 of 193 ED cases ended up in conviction of politicians, gov tells Rajya Sabha

Only two out of 193 cases registered by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in the last ten years have ended up in conviction of political leaders, the Ministry of Finance told parliament.

Of that, one conviction took place back in 2016-17 while the other in 2019-20, Minister of State for Finance Pankaj Chaudhary said in a written response to a question in Rajya Sabha. .

The government’s response came to a set of queries from Communist Party of India (Marxist) Rajya Sabha MP, AA Rahim, who wanted to know State-wise and year-wise number of ED cases registered against MPs, MLAs and local administration members in the last ten years, along with their party affiliation.

The MoS, however, replied that the ED does not maintain State-wise data of cases registered against MPs, MLAs and local administrators along with their political party.

The Ministry of Finance also said that no information is maintained on an increase in ED cases against opposition leaders in recent years.

The information shared with Rajya Sabha exhibited a spike in the total number of registered cases in the past few years, with the most number of cases registered in a year, 32, was from 2022 to 2023.

On being asked whether any reforms have been initiated to improve the transparency and efficiency in the ED probe, the Ministry stated, “The Directorate of Enforcement is a premier law enforcement agency of the Government of India which has been entrusted with the administration and enforcement of Prevention of Money-laundering Act, 2002 (PMLA), Foreign Exchange Management Act, 1999 (FEMA) and Fugitive Economic Offenders Act, 2018 (FEOA). ED takes up the cases for investigation based on credible evidence/ material and does not distinguish cases based on political affiliations, religion or otherwise.”

The ED’s low conviction rate has been a subject of scrutiny of the Supreme Court and parliamentarians in the past too. 

In November 2024, the Apex Court questioned the ED over the low rate of convictions in money laundering cases.

Congress Rajya Sabha MP, Randeep Surjewala said in December that the ED’s conviction rate in the last 5 years did not cross 5 per cent, as out of the 911 cases filed under Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), only 42 resulted in conviction.

Surjewala, who said this on the basis of Centre’s response to his question in parliament, had charged that misuse of ED and PMLA cases was exposed due to low conviction rate.

Of the 911 cases, just 257 or 28 per cent cases could go for trial in the last five years, while 654 or 71.7 per cent cases remained pending in the same period, he said on the data provided by Minister of State for Finance Pankaj Chaudhary.

In 12 months of 2023, the ED filed a maximum of 239 prosecution complaints followed by 206 in ten months of 2024. But, 2019 saw lowest registration with ED filling 50 prosecution complaints while it went up to 106 the next year, 128 in 2021 and 182 in 2022.