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The Delhi High Court today adjourned, due to non-availability of the bench, to January 5 Amazon's petition against Enforcement Directorate (ED) for its "roving" enquiry in the Future Group deal case and for allegedly causing undue harassment to Amazon and its executives.

The matter was listed before the bench of Justice Rekha Palli.

The plea has alleged that it is evident that the directive issued by ED is "conducting a fishing and roving investigation against Petitioner No. 1 (Amazon) and subjecting the Petitioners to proceedings without any jurisdiction and thereby causing unnecessary harassment to the Petitioners."

Amazon has stated that the investigation being conducted under Foreign Exchange Management Act against Amazon pertains to transactions that have no foreign exchange element.

Amazon has alleged that as part of its investigation on the Future Group deal, ED has allegedly sought from Amazon details of due diligence done by Indian Amazon entities, legal opinion sought, valuation report along with details of concerned entities carrying out due diligence, valuation, legal opinion, and communication with such entities.

All of this, Amazon argued amount to ED attempting to "compel Petitioner No. 1 to submit privileged legal advice and legal opinions given by law firms/advocates and legal counsel of Indian Amazon entities..."

Amazon has argued that such requests by the investigating agency are "untenable in law" as they are not even addressees of the Directive nor connected to the Future Group transaction.

Challenging ED's jurisdiction to investigate the deal, Amazon has said that ED "does not possess the requisite jurisdiction, under Section 13 read with Section 37 of FEMA to investigate issues relating to people joining or leaving the legal team of Indian Amazon entities in India, payments made, etc."

In addition to this it is further added that the investigation is a fishing and roving exercise and overlaps with the earlier investigation being conducted by Bangalore Regional Office of the ED.

Cause Title: Amazon Wholesale (India) Pvt. Ltd. And Anr. vs The Directorate of Enforcement and Ors.