Source : INDIA TODAY NEWS
A special court in Mumbai on Wednesday refused to discharge an associate of Shiv Sena leader Bhavana Gawali, in a money laundering case while observing that he acted behind the curtain.
Special Judge AC Daga, in a detailed order on Wednesday, noted that there was enough material against accused Saeed Khan Shergul Khan.
Khan is accused of siphoning off funds from a trust named Mahila Utkarsh Pratishthan’, and was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in September 2021. He is currently out on bail.
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Gawali, a five-time Member of Parliament, is currently a member of the Maharashtra Legislative Council. She is also Chairperson of Mahila Utkarsh Pratisthan, Taluka Risod, District Washim.
After the case was registered, Gawali appeared before the ED multiple times to record her statement in connection with the case registered under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), 2002.
The allegation was that forged documents were submitted by Gawali and Khan for conversion of the charitable trust into a company under the Companies Act.
Apart from forgery, the allegation was that with other members of the trust there was diversion and siphoning off the funds received by various educational institutions of the trust to the tune of Rs 18 crores.
Rejecting Khan’s discharge plea, the judge observed that the “accused was not an office bearer or in-charge of the trust, but it does not mean that a person who is not an office bearer cannot control the management of the trust. It is just like lifting the corporate veil of a company”.
“A person who is behind the curtain is required to be brought on the stage. In this matter, the record reflects that the accused was acting behind the curtain,” he added.
In his discharge plea, Khan had claimed that he was innocent and was never the office-bearer of the trust. He said he became the chairman only after the trust turned into a company.
The conversion of the trust into a company took place at the behest of Gawali. There was no control of the accused over the trust, according to his discharge petition. Khan had been falsely implicated because he was head of the committee that was appointed to inquire into fraud, it added.
SOURCE :- TIMES OF INDIA
