After considering the case against Joshi, the court said that at this, it cannot be said that he was involved in transfer of kickbacks and there is no independent evidence to that effect either.
“Again, no statement of even any hawala operator alleged to have been involved in these transactions has been recorded and produced before the court nor any record seized from any such hawala operator in connection with transmission of the above amount has been shown to the court. Moreover, the applicant himself has also admittedly not made any incriminating depositions in his statements made U/S 50 of the PMLA and recorded by the ED officials,” the court noted.
On the allegation of Joshi using his media company to channelise funds during AAP’s Goa election campaign, the court noted that one of the witnesses in the case has already retracted her statement.
“It added that there is nothing to show that cash received by Joshi’s company is connected with the kickbacks. It can be observed that the alleged kickback amount is very huge i.e. around Rs. 100 crores and even a huge amount of around Rs. 20-30 crores is alleged to have been transferred through this applicant, whereas the payments which were allegedly made by him for the election related jobs are for meagre amount in lacs.”
Source: Barandbench
