New Delhi: From June 2014 through October this year the Enforcement Directorate (ED) recorded 6,312 cases under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) and secured the conviction of 120 accused under provisions of the PMLA during the same period, according to data tabled in parliament.

Starting August 2019, the ED also filed closure reports before special PMLA courts in 93 cases where no money laundering offence was made out, per data provided by Union junior finance minister Pankaj Chaudhary in the Lok Sabha.

Prior to the PMLA's 2019 amendment that went into effect on August 1 that year, cases where no money laundering offence was made out were closed with prior approval of a regional special director of enforcement. Between July 1, 2005 – when the PMLA began being enforced – and July 31, 2019, 1,185 such cases were closed.

Trinamool Congress MP for Asansol, West Bengal and former actor Shatrughan Sinha had asked for the number of cases the ED registered and convictions it secured between June 1, 2014 – days after Narendra Modi first became prime minister – and November 1, 2025.

According to the data provided by minister Chaudhary, it recorded a total of 6,312 cases and secured a total of 120 convictions during this time period.

While the number of recorded cases did not reach or cross 200 before the 2019-20 financial year, it hit 557 during that fiscal, jumped to 996 in 2020-21 and increased to 1,116 in 2021-22, and subsequently decreased but never went far below 700 in a full year afterwards.

Sinha also asked whether it is true that “a closure report has been filed in 49 cases and if so, the details thereof”.

Chaudhary had said in a parliamentary answer in July that the ED had filed 49 closure reports before special PMLA courts between November 1, 2015 and June 30, 2025 out of cases recorded during that same time period.

Responding to Sinha's question the minister said on Monday that from August 1, 2019 the ED filed closure reports in 93 cases where a money laundering offence was not made out.

This was attributed to “various reasons such as closure of [scheduled] offence case, cases where the court finds no offence committed related to [scheduled] offence defined under PMLA, quashing of predicate offence case etc”.

However it had closed 1,185 cases where no money laundering offence was made out in the 14 years before the PMLA was amended to require the ED to file closure reports before designated special courts.

The ED, which probes financial crimes, is empowered to investigate money laundering cases after the police or another agency registers a case of its own under what are known in the PMLA's context as ‘predicate offences’. Offences detailed in Parts A and C of the PMLA are called scheduled offences.

Its powers have been broadened by the Modi government through amendments to the PMLA, which among other things require accused persons to prove prima facie innocence in order to secure bail.

Critics say the PMLA allows the agency to be misused to target the BJP's political opponents and the Supreme Court's 2022 verdict upholding the amendments was highly controversial. A three-judge bench of the top court is currently considering a challenge to its judgment.

A bench of the court had earlier this year noted the low number of convictions the agency has secured relative to the number of cases it has recorded.

It has similarly secured a low number of convictions of politicians as compared to the number of cases filed against them.

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