Source : INDIA TODAY NEWS
Chief Justice of India (CJI) Surya Kant has highlighted the staggering scale of global money laundering, saying the illicit wealth moved around the world in a single year could theoretically buy a modest laptop for every one of the planet’s eight billion people, while less than 1 per cent of that is ever recovered.
Addressing the closing session of the 43rd International Symposium on Economic Crime in Cambridge on Saturday, the CJI said the global fight against economic crime must focus on tracing, freezing and recovering criminal proceeds.
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“If the global estimates on money laundering are even roughly right, the world launders enough money in a single year to buy every one of the eight billion people alive on the planet today a modest laptop, and still has some change left over in the coffers,” Justice Surya Kant said.
He then underlined the stark gap between the scale of the crime and the money actually recovered.
“Of that immense tide of illicit wealth, by the most generous reckoning, less than one unit in a hundred is ever recovered,” he said.
“For every hundred parts of that wealth, 99 are simply referred to in speeches and reports, while only one part is ever actually put right.”
The CJI said economic crime was not a modern phenomenon, but an age-old vice that had evolved with technology and financial systems.
He referred to the fourth-century BC Greek merchant Hegestratos, who allegedly planned to sink his ship after selling its cargo to claim insurance, as an early example of economic fraud.
He also invoked Kautilya’s Arthashastra, which identified 40 ways officials could siphon off state revenue and prescribed measures such as audits, informants, cross-verification and confiscation.
“Let the 40 ways of stealing enshrined in the Arthashastra now be enriched by forty better ways of tracing, freezing and returning,” the CJI said.
INDIA’S APPROACH
CJI Kant cited India’s legal framework against economic crime, including the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002, the Fugitive Economic Offenders Act, 2018, specialised agencies and special courts, as part of an institutional mechanism to trace, attach and confiscate proceeds of crime.
He also stressed that tackling economic crime increasingly requires countries to work together, given how easily illicit wealth crosses borders.
“Mutual Legal Assistance Treaties with other countries, however imperfect their machinery and modalities, bring a recovered asset home far more reliably than extradition ever does. Illicit wealth, after all, rarely stays where it was stolen,” he said.
The CJI also pointed to financial intelligence sharing and beneficial ownership registries as tools that need to work together to track illicit funds.
He stressed that stronger enforcement must remain within the rule of law, while referring to emerging crimes such as digital arrest scams, in which fraudsters impersonate government or law-enforcement officials to extort money.
Ultimately, he said, the success of the fight against economic crime should not be measured by how effectively the problem is described, but by how effectively stolen wealth is traced, frozen and returned.
– Ends
(With PTI, ANI inputs)
SOURCE :- TIMES OF INDIA
