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2015 (6) TMI 1173 - HC - Money LaunderingOffence under PMLA - personal savings bank account of the petitioner maintained with the ICICI Bank freezed/attached - Whether the respondent no.2 was justified in invoking Section 102 of the Code for the purpose of freezing the savings account of the petitioner maintained with the ICICI Bank? - Held that:- The instructions were issued to the bank to freeze the account of the petitioner way back in the month of August 2014. Indisputably, till this date, the authority has not been able to pass any order of provisional attachment under Section 5 of the Act. This would suggest two things : (i) there is no sufficient material collected by the authority so that the authority can record its reasons to believe that if the account is not freezed, then the non freezing of the property would frustrate the proceeding under the PMLA, and (ii) the authority does not intend to file any complaint against such person whose account has been ordered to be freezed. For the aforesaid reasons, although the judgment was reserved CAV, this matter was once again notified on 8th June 2015 only with a view to ascertain from the learned Assistant Solicitor General of India, whether in the mean time the authority had passed any order of provisional attachment under Section 5 of the Act or whether it intended to pass such order in the near future if adequate material has been collected during the course of the investigation carried out so far. Assistant Solicitor General of India, after taking instructions from the officer of the Department present in the Court, made a statement that the authority has been able to collect sufficient material on the basis of which the authority now intends to pass an appropriate order of provisional attachment under Section 5 of the PMLA. On one hand if an order of provisional attachment is passed under Section 5 of the PMLA, the life of it is 150 days subject to the further orders that may be passed by the adjudicating authority, whereas if an order of attachment is passed under Section 102 of the Code read with Section 65 of the PMLA, then there is no time period prescribed so far as its operation is concerned. Such a situation should not crop up. In light of the statement made by the learned Assistant Solicitor General of India, do not want to go further into the matter - if the provisional order of attachment under Section 5 of the PMLA is not passed within a period of one week from today, then the instructions given by the Department to the bank for freezing of the account shall automatically come to an end and the bank shall permit the petitioner thereafter to operate her account. The order of attachment of a bank account in exercise of the powers under Section 102 of the Code read with Section 65 of the PMLA cannot continue for an indefinite period of time, more particularly, when the life of an order of the provisional attachment under Section 5 of the PMLA is maximum upto 150 days.
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