A special Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) court in Mumbai on Tuesday allowed an application filed by Enforcement Directorate (ED) and issued a fresh letter of request (LR) to competent authorities of Singapore against former IPL chairman Lalit Modi.
A letter rogatory or letter of request is a formal request from a court to a foreign court for some type of judicial assistance. The LR would be sent to the respective countries through the ministry of home affairs.
The court had issued LR against Modi in July last year on the ED’s request so that it could collect evidence and documents related to the money laundering case registered against Modi. However the agency informed special judge P.R. Bhavake that some mistake had occurred while forwarding the LRs to Singapore. Following this the Singapore authorities sent some queries to ED seeking specific details about information sought.
The ED had received e-mail received from Singapore in October 2015 seeking clarification on the nature of assistance being sought. According to that mail, the LR issued to Singapore spoke about details sought from Mauritius also and hence they requested to send revised LR specifying the details of assistance required from their government. Due to this the agency required the LR to be re-issued and the court allowed this application.
The ED had sought the issuance of the LR as it wanted the details of bank accounts and transaction in connection with the 2008 deal between World Sports Group (WSG) and Multi Screen Media (MSM) for television rights of Indian Premier League (IPL) worth Rs 425 crore.
The ED started a probe in 2009 under Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA) to investigate whether payment of Rs 425 crore facilitation fee by MSM Singapore to WSG Mauritius was made illegally.
