A Comparison of Punishment under the PMLA Act with the Japanese Legal System: Evaluating the link between High Conviction Rates and Unfair Means of Prosecution

The Prevention of Money Laundering Act was introduced in 2002 as a countermeasure for preventing Money Laundering and preventing the accumulation of unaccounted and untaxed wealth, which often if not every time arises from illegal streams of income. It is one of the very few legislations in India where the burden of proof lies on the accused to prove their innocence. This, coupled with the strong punishments present often create a possibility of misuse, which is a major point of criticism to this legislation. In Japan, it could be seen that for its entire criminal system, there lies an almost 99 percent conviction rate. While some may attribute it to good policing resulting in only bad criminals being caught, many will also attribute it to a strict assumption of guilt by the judiciary, despite the burden of proof being on the prosecution to prove the guilt of the person. We could see how in both the PMLA and in the Japanese Legal System, there lies a form of inherent assumption of guilt, or possibility of a person being guilty even before a trial has started. The main aim of this project is to compare the manner in which PMLA and the Japanese Legal System assume guilt of an accused and the effects it has on conviction rates, along with analyzing the changes which can be brought in this legal system.