Madras HC Stays ED Proceedings Against Film Producer & Businessman in TASMAC Scam

Chennai, The Madras High Court stayed all further proceedings as a result of the Enforcement Directorate's authorization to search and seize in furtherance of the Enforcement Directorate's search and seize, against film producer Akash Baskaran and businessman Vikram Ravindran in the ₹1,000 crore TASMAC money laundering case.

The division bench of Justices M S Ramesh and V Lakshminarayanan granted the interim stay on the petitions filed by Baskaran and Vikram against the action of the enforcement directorate.

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Senior counsels Vijay Narayanan and Abudukumar submitted that there was no relationship whatsoever the petitioners had with relation to the operations of TASMAC and in the alleged 41 Fir's registered by the Directorate of Vigilance and Anti-Corruption for the scheduled offences, no independent allegation or predicate offence had been registered against the petitioners and therefore questioned the legality of the invocation of Section 17 of the PMLA.

The bench in its order stated that since the petitioners had completely denied any involvement relating to the scheduled offences, it had called upon the special public prosecutor to produce before it the materials which will form the basis of information in their possession, which had been the product of information that would lead them to believe that the petitioners had committed an act, which constitutes money laundering or is in possession of any proceeds of crime, in a sealed cover, documents or property, through an interim order dated June 13, 2025.

On June 17, the SPP produced a sealed cover with an undated and unsigned brief description note along with supporting documents, contending that it was the information they had regarding the petitioners, which led them to commence a search operations, the bench noted.

(Not verbatim quote, it is sufficient to describe/ say what the bench conveys about the information produced) The bench noted that the brief description note, however, does not relate to the information or the materials which the Directorate claims to have possession, in their earlier notes on 'reason to believe', produced on June 17. The brief description note also does not disclose any possession of information by the Directorate, which qualifies them to search and seize in the petitioners premises, the bench contended.

The bench indicated to Additional Solicitor General S V Raju that whatever information/materials that they produced before it in the sealed cover had no nexus to their original claims of possession of incrimination information, and he submitted that the 41 FIRs relating to the scheduled offences registered against the TASMAC officials, were the information in their possession, which qualified them to conduct the search and seizure operation.

"When we expressed to the Additional Solicitor General that we do not approve his claim in this regard, the Additional Solicitor General submitted that they had already directed the respondent to de-seal the petitioner's premises . His statement is hereby recorded. The Additional Solicitor General sought four weeks time to file a counter affidavit before us," the bench added.

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The bench said, "On a prima facie view, we find that the Authorisation No.96/2025, dated May 15,2025 and the consequential sealing of the petitioner's premises by the respondent, is wholly without authority or jurisdiction, since no incriminating information or material was in their possession on May 15, 2025 when the respondent had authorised for search and seizure operations and on May 16, 2025 when the respondent had sealed the petitioner's premises".

The bench stated that it deliberately refrained from describing the supposed material or documents claimed to be in the possession of the ED for obvious reasons, but it would only say that what purported to be the information before it by the Directorate bears no relation at all to an information which may have caused them to hold a belief that the petitioner may have committed the offence of money laundering.

The bench stated that there shall be a further interim order to the ED to return all the properties of the petitioners that have been seized, following the search and seizure proceedings of May 16th, pending the ultimate disposal of this Writ Petition. The petitioners shall not tamper with or alienate the digital devices that will be returned to him and/or he shall receive, pending the ultimate disposal of this writ petition. For further hearing of the case, the bench posted to July 16.

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