CJI Surya Kant Calls for Global Cooperation to Combat Economic Crimes

Economic crimes move faster than treaties; global cooperation key to recovery: CJI Surya Kant

NEW DELHI: Chief Justice of India Surya Kant said for every Rs 100 laundered, authorities and law enforcement agencies recovered only Re 1, mainly because of the ingenuity of economic offenders, and lack of global cooperation on extraditing fugitives. Money laundered globally in a year was more than enough to buy every single person on earth a modest laptop, CJI said at the 43rd International Symposium on Economic Crime in Cambridge Saturday. "...For every hundred parts of that wealth, ninety-nine are simply referred to in speeches and reports, while only one part is ever actually put right." CJI Surya Kant quoted ancient Indian statesman Kautilya’s Arthashastra, which had recorded that it was impossible for an official to handle the king’s revenue and take nothing from it, and provided for an antidote through audits, cross-verification and confiscation of ill-gotten gain. Referring to India’s layered legislations against economic crimes and its balancing by judicial interventions, the CJI said though India had signed extradition and mutual legal assistance treaties with foreign jurisdictions, “the property we actually recover remains, frankly, underwhelming”.

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The CJI said that illicit wealth and economic crimes moved faster than the pace of ratification of treaties and, hence, no jurisdiction, however well resourced or determined, could pursue them alone, despite the existence of provisions for non-conviction based forfeitures, unexplained wealth orders, beneficial ownership registers and financial intelligence sharing. “None of these tools is missing from our shelves. What is missing, and what each jurisdiction owes the other, is the willingness to use them together rather than one at a time: a forfeiture order in one country acted upon promptly by a registry in another, an intelligence tip followed through to an actual freeze rather than left to gather dust,” he further added. India had initiated processes for extraditions of Vijay Mallya with the UK authorities in 2017 and Nirav Modi with the US in 2018. None of them has fructified in extradition of the two, accused of misappropriating huge sums and fleeing the country.

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