Financial Express : ED phone tap puts Allahabad HC in spot - 0 views
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gibreel ferishta on 10 Jan 11In the season of phonetaps, comes a startling admission by the Enforcement Directorate that while probing charges of money laundering, it intercepted phone conversations between members of the Singhania group, that runs Kanpur-based LML, and their lawyers. The tap was done just days before a court order was due in the case. The recorded conversations, said ED's counsel additional solicitor general Harin Rawal, raise questions regarding the Allahabad High Court order that stayed the ED probe. In their order, on June 9 last year, a vacation bench of Justice Rakesh Sharma and Justice Shyam Shankar Tiwari had called the ED's investigation "wholly without jurisdiction and contrary to the mandate of FEMA (Foreign Exchange Management Act)". In the first of his two opinions, on June 21, 2010 - which form the basis of the government's Special Leave Petition filed in the Supreme Court last September challenging the HC stay - Rawal said: "To put it briefly, a couple of days prior to the interim order being rendered by the Honourable Division Bench, a conversation is recorded that would clearly be a reasonable basis to believe that the Honourable Division Bench has passed an interim order on considerations which are other than legal or judicial."