New Delhi: Cases filed by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) under Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) have risen to a four-year high, increasing to 1,080 in the financial year 2025-26, the parliament was informed on Tuesday (August 4). This takes the total cases filed by ED under the anti-money laundering law to 4,622 in the last five years. The conviction rate for the same period, however, was only 43.The information came in a written reply to a question by Communist Party of India (Marxist)’s Rajya Sabha MP V. Sivadasan. Minister of State for Finance Pankaj Chaudhary, responding, said the ED has filed prosecution complaints in 2,444 cases under the PMLA provisions before the special courts, as on June 30 this year.“These cases are at various stages of trial. The ED has arrested 1,243 accused under the provisions of the PMLA,” the minister said. Regarding the number of undertrial prisoners, the minister said the data for those currently in jail, some of which are arrested by a predicate agency, “is not centrally maintained”.The last high was in 2021-22, when the agency registered a total of 1,116 cases under PMLA. It declined to 953 in 2022-23, and 698 cases in 2023-24, before picking up again to 775 cases in 2024-25 and 1,080 in 2025-26, the data showed.Convictions stood at three in 2021-22, nine in 2022-23, increased to 13 the following year before dropping to nine again in 2024-25 and 2025-26. Of the total 43 convictions in the four-year period, the number of persons accused convicted in these cases stood at 104 – the highest number of accused convicted over being in 2024-25 at 38, followed by 24 in 2022-23, and 19 each in 2023-24 and 2025-26.The minister also gave details regarding cases by the Income Tax department. A total of 2,127 prosecution cases were filed by the Income Tax Department over the last five years (2021-22 to 2025-26), with the lowest in three years being in 2025-26 at 432. There were 611 prosecution cases in 2024-25, 502 in 2023-24 and 387 in 2022-23. “Income Tax matters, prosecution complaints are filed only after obtaining sanction from the competent authority under section 279(1) of the Income Tax Act, upon completion of investigation and recording of relevant facts,” Chaudhary said.The number of cases convicted by the I-T department in 2025-26 increased to 47, whereas those acquitted rose to a four-year high of 293. The minister clarified that the number of prosecution cases filed and the figures relating to conviction or acquittal are not directly correlated, as convictions or acquittals may pertain to cases filed in different years.There have been several developments regarding the PMLA in recent years, including money laundering investigations against news organisations like the NewsClick, cases into Trinamool Congress (TMC) bank accounts, political consultancy firm Indian Political Action Committee (I-PAC), among others.In May this year, the Supreme Court observed that even in case of a trial under a special law such as the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), the accused had to be heard before a court can take cognisance of any money laundering case.The order came while the top court was hearing the ED’s plea that a special PMLA court cannot be made to follow the general criminal procedure contemplated under Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita. The bench quashed a PMLA court’s order that had taken cognisance of the offence without hearing the accused.