Bail granted to CA as continued incarceration of petitioner not justified: HC

Suresh Goyal Vs Directorate of Enforcement (Andhra Pradesh High Court)

Andhra Pradesh High Court held that as the petitioner is a Chartered Accountant by profession and it is his first offence and he has been in jail since long. Accordingly, continuance incarceration of the petitioner is not justified. Hence, bail granted.

Facts- According to the FIR, Andhra Pradesh State Skill Development Corporation, Andhra Pradesh (APSSDC) entered into a Memorandum of Association (MoA) with SIEMENS (combination of SISW and DTSPL), to impart Hi-end technology training to the trainers of APSSDC, pursuant to which DTSPL had to provide training software development including various sub modules designed for the high-end software for advanced manufacturing CAD/CAM, and the MoA does not contemplate any sub contract. As part of the SIEMENS project, 6 clusters at a cost of Rs.546.84 crores (per cluster) were to be formed in which 90% of the total project cost i.e. Rs.2951.00 crores was supposed to be borne by M/s. SISW and M/s. DTSPL, and the remaining 10% i.e. Rs.330.00 crores was supposed to be borne by the Government. The total project cost for establishing 6 SIEMENS clusters amount to Rs.3281.40 crores.

Since Sections 120B, 418, 420, 471 IPC and Section 13 of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988 are scheduled offences under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002, investigation was initiated. Major portion of funds were diverted by SEPL to suspicious entities under the guise of supply of software/hardware/materials/ which, in reality, was not done. The purpose of diversion of funds was to generate cash and thereby siphon off money from the system without utilizing the same for the SIEMENS the funds.

It is alleged that the petitioner arranged bogus entries with the help of entry providers to divert the government funds which were transferred from DTSPL to SEPL and further to ACI and other entitles.

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