ED restituted assets worth $5.6 billion to victims: Director Rahul Navin

NEW DELHIThe Enforcement board of directors (ED) has restituted assets charles frederick worth more or less $5.6 one million million (Rs52,329 crore) to victims of money laundering, government agency chief Rahul Navin said on Monday at the GlobE Network steering committee meeting in Delhi.Navin said a significant portion of these recoveries were made in the last two years, according to an ED statement.The top ED official made the remarks at the three-day steering committee meeting of the Global Operational Network of Anti-Corruption Law Enforcement Authorities (GlobE Network) - a global platform of specialised anti-corruption law enforcement authorities established under the Riyadh Initiative during Saudi Arabia’s G20 Presidency.The platform enables direct, practitioner-level cooperation among member agencies for the investigation, prosecution, and recovery of proceeds of corruption. The meeting is being held in Delhi from March 23 to 25.According to the statement, Navin highlighted the complementary roles of India’s two member agencies: the CBI (Central Bureau of Investigation) as India’s primary anti-corruption investigation and prosecution agency, and the ED as the agency mandated under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) to trace, restrain, confiscate, and restitute proceeds of crime.He underscored that asset recovery was not an afterthought but the truest measure of enforcement success under the modern anti-corruption framework enshrined in the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.Section 8(8) of the PMLA empowers the special court to direct the government to restore confiscated property to a claimant with a legitimate interest in the property who may have suffered a loss due to the accused’s money laundering.Some of the cases in which ED has restored the proceeds of crime to the banks or investors include those against fugitive liquor baron Vijay Mallya, diamantaires Nirav Modi and Mehul Choksi ( ₹15,000 crore restituted to banks in these three cases), probes against several builders and ponzi schemes.Between 2014 and 2025, ED has registered 6,508 cases under PMLA and arrested 1,135 individuals. It has also attached assets worth around 1.85 lakh crore.Navin acknowledged the practical value of GlobE tools to Indian investigators, specifically citing Spain’s assistance in a case where information shared through the network “led directly to the restraining of assets through formal channels”.In his address, CBI director Praveen Sood underlined that corruption today was “transnational, sophisticated, and increasingly enabled by technology, making international cooperation not a matter of choice but an absolute necessity”.Sood called upon all member agencies to actively engage with CBI, share actionable intelligence, and make full use of available cooperation mechanisms, the ED statement said.