ED's expansion

Last week, the Enforcement Directorate (ED), the 66-year-old agency that puts into operation the Foreign Exchange Management Act (Fema) and Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), saw an exponential expansion of its powers under the PMLA. The Centre has amended a 2006 notification to include 15 organisations on the list of institutions with which the ED may share information regarding cases. Among these are the National Investigation Agency (NIA), the Competition Commission of India (CCI), the Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO), and State Police Divisions. This expands substantially the ambit of the ED’s information-sharing brief, which was previously limited to such bodies as the Central Bureau of Investigation’s economic offences wing, the banking and stock market regulators, the Research and