Show zero tolerance to white-collar crimes to protect investor faith: HC
Calling for a robust and pragmatic approach to financial frauds, Justice Harpreet Singh Brar of the Punjab and Haryana High Court has asserted that economic offences—especially those involving real estate scams and money laundering—stand on a different pedestal and warrant a more sophisticated legal response to prevent erosion of public trust in the justice system.
“Of late, economic offences have become increasingly prevalent, attracting public attention, with many high profile cases coming to the fore. Therefore, a robust and pragmatic approach is warranted to combat this rising trend of deceitful manipulation, particularly involving real estate,” Justice Brar asserted.
The assertions came as Justice Brar dismissing a petition seeking quashing of an FIR in a “serious economic” real-estate “fraud committed in a pre-planned manner with an intention to cheat and deceive thousands of gullible investors”.
An FIR in the matter was registered at a police station in Mohali.
The Bench was told that 1,162 persons were induced to pay 95 per cent of the total price of property, which they intended to purchase. But the accused did not even pay the instalments they owed to GMADA towards allotment of land. The court was also told that the commercial project ‘WTC Chandigarh’ was launched in Mohali in 2022.
Justice Brar observed economic offences, due to their cascading impact, affected not just individual victims but the financial stability of the State.
“Such transactions often form a part of grand scale money laundering operations… allowing such activities to continue unchecked would be detrimental to the larger interest of society and contribute towards recession-like circumstances,” the judgment reads.
Justice Brar added that economic offences, more often than not, involved complex mechanisms and pertained to multiple jurisdictions “falling beyond the scope of traditional investigating tools.”
As such, the courts were under an obligation to adopt a sophisticated approach “illustrating even higher standards of care, so as to ensure that the perpetrators do not take advantage of technical loopholes in the legal framework.”
Justice Brar added the investigation into such frauds were required to be conducted in an objective manner “or else providing assistance and justice to the victims can become even more cumbersome, as there is every likelihood that their investments are diverted elsewhere.”
