New Delhi: Senior IPS officer of 1993 batch Yogesh Gupta has been appointed Special Secretary, Adjudication, at Enforcement Directorate’s (ED) headquarters in New Delhi. Adjudication is the legal process by which an arbiter or judge reviews evidence and argumentation, including legal reasoning set forth by opposing parties or litigants, to come to a decision which determines rights and obligations between the parties involved.      

An IPS officer of Kerala cadre, Gupta was ED’s Special Director heading the eastern region headquarters at Kolkata since 2014 and led the investigations into some of the much talked about money-laundering cases in West Bengal and adjoining States like Saradha, Rose Valley and Narada scams.    

As per the media reports, Gupta has been credited for heading the probes that led to the first two convictions under the anti-money laundering law (Prevention of Money Laundering Act) in the country. The first such conviction for the ED came in 2017 of former Jharkhand Minister Hari Narayan Rai.    

The PMLA was enacted in 2002 and implemented in 2005 to check serious crimes of tax evasion and generation of black money. According to data, of the about a dozen convictions achieved by the ED in the country, five were secured in the eastern region. The eastern region of the agency also obtained the first order for ‘confiscation’ of assets in a money-laundering case linked to a drugs probe.    

A few months ago, the eastern region of the ED also issued the biggest-ever notice under the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA) as it show-caused the Shree Ganesh Jewellery House for Rs 7,220 crore. The company is among the top 100 wilful bank-loan defaulters in the country, according to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).    

Last month, the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet (ACC) had posted the agency's principal special director, Simanchala Dash, as Adviser to the Executive Director of International Monetary Fund (IMF) in Washington. The ED, which enforces the PMLA and FEMA in the country, is headed by a director and has six special directors who head various regions and verticals. /BI/