The Supreme Court on Wednesday stayed the proceedings before a special PMLA court in an alleged money laundering case against ‘lottery king’ Santiago Martin.
Staying the trial court proceedings, a bench of Justice Abhay S. Oka and Justice Ujjal Bhuyan issued a notice seeking a response from the Directorate of Enforcement on ‘lottery king’ Santiago Martin’s plea against the decision of the PMLA special court in Ernakulam, Kerala.
The special PMLA court in Ernakulam had refused to defer proceedings on Santiago Martin’s application seeking that the trial in the alleged money laundering case be kept in abeyance till the predicate case registered by the CBI is decided.
Senior advocate Aditya Sondhi and advocate Rohini Musa, who appeared for Santiago Martin, said that the special court ought to have considered that the trial in the PMLA case can commence only after the conclusion of the trial in the predicate case.
Martin was an accused in the case registered by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), Cochin. Based on this, the ED filed a complaint implicating seven accused persons, including Martin, in a PMLA case.