The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Tuesday, 21 May, issued a gag order to all its officers, barring them from interacting with members of the press.
This, the ED claims, was done to prevent certain information relating to ongoing investigations from leaking, thereby ‘jeopradising’ the case.
In a circular, issued by ED director Sanjay Mishra, the agency warned its officers that any deviation from the order would amount to ‘dereliction of duty’ and would invite punitive action.
It was addressed to all SDEs and JDs in the ED headquarters, all officers and officials of HIU and all other DDs, ADs, EOs and AEOs in the headquarters.
The headquarters of the agency handles some of the most high-profile cases of money laundering and hawala transactions apart from supervising investigation of all its zonal offices in the country.
Officials said the fresh order has been issued after it was found that the line of investigation to be taken by the agency was "leaked" to the press by certain officials and hence, it was required to check such instances, PTI reported.
“This is against the protocol of government agencies. There is no restriction for journalists and media to interact with the designated media officers,” a senior official quoted by the news agency said.
The ED is a central probe agency that implements two major laws in the country-- Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) and Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA)-- to check high-value economic crimes and black money.
Meanwhile, a source in the know told The Quint that the gag order was issued at the behest of the Prime Minister’s Office. This, the source added, was in response to the recent exit polls, that predicted the return of the Narendra Modi-led NDA government at the Centre.
(More details awaited)
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