The CBI Director A P Singh today said, Indians are the largest depositors in banks abroad with an estimated 500 billion US dollars illegal money stashed in tax havens. Speaking at the inauguration of first interpol global taining programme on anti-corruption and asset recovery in New Delhi, Mr Singh said, India, in particular, has suffered from the flow of illegal funds to tax havens such as Mauritius, Switzerland, Lichtenstein and British Virgin islands.
He said largest depositors in Swiss Banks are also reported to be Indians.
He said getting information about such illegal transactions is a time taking process as investigators have to peel each layer by sending judicial requests to the country where such deposits have been made.
The CBI Director said tracing, freezing, confiscation and repatriation of stolen assets is a legal challenge, a complex process which requires expertise and political will.
Mr Singh said there are many obstacles to asset recovery. He said not only is it a specialised legal process is in the way , but there are also language barriers and a lack of trust while working with other countries. He said the World Bank estimates the cross border flow ofmoney from criminal activities and tax evasion is around 1.5 trillion US dollars .
Earlier, inaugurating the programme Minister of State for Personnel V Narayanasamy said anti-corruption enactments have been strengthened in the country but it is difficult to trace the money stashed abroad by criminals.
He said number of agreements have been signed with tax havens but process of getting information is very slow. Quoting Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee's statement on the black money issue in the recent past, he said so far the country has been able to bring back 57000 crore rupees of black money. He said the government is continuing the process to bring back the black money stashed abroad.
The Minister said another area of concern is the extradition of criminals. Our correspondent reports, over 30 senior police officers from Australia, Afghanistan, China, Hongkong, Sri Lanka, the United Kingdom, Indonesia, Fiji, Malaysia, Nepal, Singapore and Philippines are participating in the training programme.
