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Crime and Money Laundering: The Indian Perspective by Jyoti Trehan; Oxford University
Press, New Delhi, 2004; pp 251, Rs 450.
PRAFUL BIDWAI
Among the many varieties of corrupt and criminal financial practices preva- lent in the
world, perhaps none is as eco- nomically damaging as the flight of capital planned and
executed systematically by tax evaders, financial racketeers, bribe- takers, arms traders,
extortionists, drug traffickers, mafia-style criminals, and of course, "normal" and
"legitimate" busi- nesses, which use sleazy means of capital transfer such as 'hawala' and
underground networks, as well as perfectly "respect- able" international banks operating
"above board" and legitimately. The effect of capital flight is especially harsh on the
economies of the third world and on the welfare of billions of people.
The magnitude of such flight is hard to estimate in a precise way for the simple reason that
a good deal of the money is generated illegally or away from the law's gaze; even where the
wealth is generated legitimately, it is concealed from the authorities. There is no paper trail
left worth the name. So hard numbers are diffi- cult to come by. Yet, some rough figures are
accepted as reasonable among the "experts" (including economists, accountants, bankers,
crime investigators and the police) who deal with such matters. They are of the order of $
1.5 trillion to 3 trillion, or about the size of the French economy (its legitimate component,
of course).
This is a staggering number, equivalent to some 2 to 5 per cent of world GDP. It exceeds
the flows of official development assistance or aid by a factor of 20 or 40. This money
represents large-scale 'loot' or theft of national wealth by unscrupulous businessmen and
criminals, and a massive drain on the resources of the countries of the global south.
A good deal of such money spirited away abroad - to tax havens, or to secret bank accounts
in numerous western countries - returns to its home country; or gets in- vested legitimately
somewhere else, typi- cally through sophisticated operations and complicated manoeuvres
involving shell companies, trusts, offshore juris- dictions, remittances, gifts, amnesty
schemes, government bonds and even wire transfers. It has now become laundered money:
its illegal origins have been con- cealed, and it has become a legitimate hoard ready for
investment in "above board" enterprises.
Such returning capital flight, or "round- tripping", is only one component of the global
money laundering business, al- though it is probably the largest and most important one.
Money laundering is also intimately linked to the global narcotics trade, as well as the
financing of criminal syndicates and sub-state terrorist activities.
The money laundering business is enor- mous and globally ramified, but unevenly
distributed. According to the financial analyst Kannan Srinivasan, "the US and UK account
for the bulk of the world's money laundering capital movements, but this has depended
critically on money laundering operations in other parts of the world, in particular India,
that has always been an important conduit for capital flight" (based on Kannan Srinivasan,
Monash Asia Institute, in Vicziany (Controlling Arms and Terror: Regional Security in the
Asia Pacific after Bali and Baghdad, Edward Elgar, forthcoming) and his paper pre- sented
at IDEA's workshop 'Financial Crime and Fragility under Financial Globalisation',
December 2005).
India's Link
Historically, India has been a major link in the global financial chain associated with money
laundering. This Indian role precedes independence. Way back in the 1930s and 1940s,
Indian maharajahs or princes, as well as industrialists unsure of the future of the country,
are believed to have transferred huge assets abroad. The volumes transferred probably
increased greatly after the late 1960s, following the abolition of privy purses and nationali-
sation of major commercial banks. India' s contemporary importance in the money
laundering business is recognised even by international financial institutions, and of course,
major banks.
And yet, there are two major absences or gaps in the analysis of money launder- ing and
strategies to counter it. First, major "international" (read, western or northern) agencies like
the Financial Action Task Force - set up in 1989 by the governments of 20 countries - only
recognise and focus on money laundering operations pertain- ing to the narcotics trade and
serious crimes including terrorism (the force is largely composed of nominees of OECD
states and operates out of the OECD office in Paris, although it is not a part of it).
This narrow focus flies in the face of what is known about the methods deployed by drug
lords and terrorist networks, which is that they use "mainstream" means and conduits,
including legitimate banks, trusts and "respectable" tax havens, in addition to informal or
crime-lined routes like hawala. As Srinivasan puts it: "terror- ists are relative newcomers [to
money laundering], who have skilfully employed widely available services...The Nine
Eleven Commission in the US speaks of terrorist networks laundering less than half a
million dollars over several years - a sum that will never show up on any radar screen."
The OECD's preoccupation with links between narcotics and terrorism and money
laundering and its exclusion of a clear focus on the theft of national wealth from the global
south, is explained both by the fact that the west is the principal destina- tion of southern
capital flight, and by the advocacy of capital account convertibility by the international
financial institutions, in keeping with their policy dogmas.
The second absence pertains to India: there has been no worthwhile investiga- tion or
analysis (at least from within the country) of money laundering, which is focused on India.
This absence is all the more glaring not only because India has a long history of hawala
transactions, "double book-keeping", mis-reporting of exports and imports and of
remittances from the diaspora, all facilitating capital flight, but because India has opened up
its economy over the past one-and-a-half decades to an unprecedented extent. This has
vastly expanded the scope for spiriting funds out of the country (at the same time, thanks to
India's unremitting quest for foreign investment, there is greater scope for returning capital
flight).
Analytical Perspective
The present book fills this gap and hence fulfils a vital need. It offers an incisive analytical
perspective, besides a wealth of information on a range of issues related to crime and
money laundering, both in its Indian and its global dimension. It is outstanding in its clarity
and remarkable for the simplicity with which it presents complex empirical details to the
lay reader. It deserves a warm welcome and should command serious attention. India has
now clearly emerged as a big player in the global money laundering business. It may be one
of the greatest originators of capital flight anywhere in the world.
India's international trade probably offers the most important conduit for capital transfers.
Recently, Florida International Univer- sity researchers tracked India's trade with the US
between 1993 and 1995 to look for abnormal pricing or evidence of under- and over-
invoicing. There was a plenty of evidence. They estimated that in 1995, capital flight from
India to the US effected through the mis-pricing of trade was up to $ 5.58 billion. Says
Srinivasan: "Were this maximum figure in the range to hold true for other countries with
which India trades today, Indian money laundering through trade would exceed $ 50 billion
annually".
This figure is surely high enough to cause an alarm. As a rough estimate, it is fully in
conformity with the rule-of-thumb that in many southern countries, the mag- nitude of the
stock of capital flight is of the same order as the volume of external debt. Indeed, on this
criteria, the estimate is conservative.
Whatever the precise number, the issue of money laundering and India merits close
attention and analysis - and not just from policy-makers and law enforcers, but from
academics, including economists, politi- cal scientists, sociologists, criminologists and
students of political economy as well. The issue has acquired great topical rele- vance now
that India has enacted a money laundering law, by finally passing a bill that was hanging
fire since 1998.
The book under review introduces the reader to the subject through a series of steps ranging
from organised crime and big money-related crime to economic scams, and from tax
evasion to the me- chanics and typologies of money launder- ing, identifying 24 means and
routes in the process.
Of the five parts into which the book is divided, three are largely descriptive, but usefully
so. They outline the growth of different kinds of financial crimes and evolution of money
laundering, and dis- cuss the measures that have been proposed or taken to combat it.
Analytically, the author is at his most incisive while dealing with underground or parallel
banking systems, such as hawala (and more), and in his critique of the Money Laundering
Act, which has just been passed in India.
The author, a senior police officer, who worked as a Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fund
Fellow, goes about his job with a schematic approach bordering at times on the didactic, but
nevertheless engaging and highly accessible on account of its lucidity and lack of jargon.
The book follows a fairly conventional theoretical framework in dealing with the political
economy of financial crime and punishment.
One gets the impression that the frame- work generally goes along with the view that many
financial crimes originate in excessive state controls - when much of the evidence points in
the opposite direction. What facilitates capital flight is not excessive controls, but too little
regulation within an overall context of kleptocracy. The kleptocracy thrives because there is
little public accountability and too little democratic policy-makig.
The author avoids the trap which many law-enforcers often fall into: an excessive
preoccupation with the link between big crime and national sovereignty. He also
recognises, unlike many neoliberal ideo- logues, that a number of policies adopted and
measures taken in the process of liberalisation and globalisation call for greater, not less,
regulation, and the need for a vigilant eye on such things as the under-selling of public
sector enterprises to private companies, trading in inter- national securities, banking and
insurance and non-banking financial institutions, etc. He calls these "the perils" of "the
economic liberalisation/reform process" and holds that liberalisation "would lead to
generation of larger proceeds of crimes" and their laundering of "on a more extensive
scale".
Perhaps the greatest merit of the book lies in its analysis of underground and parallel
banking systems such as money transmission services in places like Hong Kong, Singapore,
Dubai, London and New York. Important here are the southern systems like "hundi/hawala,
chop shop/ chitti banking" and "black market peso exchange", and their links with modern
money transmission services, rapid intra- community transactions based on "trust", and
high-speed communications. Some of these informal systems go back to the middle ages
and enjoy a high level of acceptance among the Indian and Chinese diaspora.
There is, besides, an extensive and growing international network of Indian businessmen.
This is based on trade in diamonds ($10 billion-plus), and gold (India remains one of the
largest importers of legitimate as well as smuggled gold) and on scores of inter-connected
family-based operators, who coordinate their business takeover strategies and so on with
one another. Some of these trade links have grown through a consolidation of money
laundering solidarities and growing tech- niques of concealment. Chapters XII to XVII
provide good illustrations of the laundering operations involved in the diamond and gold
trade, with the help of customs officials.
In the long run, the Indian diaspora, some 25 million strong, and with an affluent section
almost a fifth of this size, will furnish a strong base for a well-ramified international
laundering network, driven by a search for quick profits and specu- lative gains.
Successive Indian governments have pampered this section in a variety of ways - including
by floating the India Deve- lopment Bonds which offered an attractive rate of interest - with
no question asked about the source of funds. This raised $ 5 billion. In 1999, to combat
sanctions and embargos imposed after the Pokharan-II nuclear tests, the government floated
Resurgent India Bonds along the same lines as the India Development Bonds and raised $
4.2 billion.
The peculiar characteristics and activities of the Indian diaspora and its numerous
connections with the domestic elite need much deeper investigation and discussion. They
certainly warrant an exploration of possible remedies to money laundering, founded on
policies that emphasise thoughtful but tough capital controls. Such controls, contrary to
neoliberal wis- dom, do work. Malaysia during the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s is
an outstanding example of such success - unlike Thailand, Indonesia and South Korea,
which gave in to pressure and liberalised the capital account thus permit- ting capital flight
on a large scale. Even George Soros, who raided the Malaysian economy, admitted the
success of Malaysia's capital controls.
The book is also strong on its discussion of various money laundering laws across the
globe, and in particular, its critique of the Indian act finally passed in 2005. The act's
passage was delayed by about seven years because it was wrongly sought to be linked to
the transition from the Foreign Exchange Regulation Act to the Foreign Exchange
Management Act.
The act is riddled with flaws, including a poorly designed schedule of offences, and a
deeply problematic procedure: search, seizure and attachment can only be carried out by the
money laundering authority after the relevant charges have been filed in a court of law. As
the author says: this provision "shows ignorance of the investi- gatory process. It is only
through searches and seizures (whether carried out suo motu or duting the process of arrest
and attach- ment) that material is built up as evidence to file charges; without sufficient
back-up material no charges can be filed."
One major amendment to the Money Laundering Bill, which delayed its pas- sage, rendered
money laundering a "non- cognisable" offence, and whittled down the seriousness of the
crime. The same amendment, however, filled a major lacuna by defining the "investigating"
agency under the act. Nevertheless, many other flaws remain. The act sets a monetary limit
to define an offence (Rs 30 lakh). But businessmen are adept as techniques such as
"smurfing" - i e, breaking up transac- tions so that each is less than the reporting
requirement and escapes the definition of offence.
Basically, the Money Laundering Act follows the same "soft-on-business" paradigm as
FEMA and is just as lax and potentially ineffectual. Just as in the past, its implementation is
likely to be undermined by a lack of coordination between different agencies: the enforce-
ment department, the Reserve Bank, cen- tral bureau of investigation, etc. The tortuous
progress of the money laundering legislation shows that the Indian government lacks the
will to dis- cipline Indian businesses and stop capital flight. It just does not have the
stomach to take tough measures. The book brings this to light.
Errors of Omission
While valuable and original, the book is marked by some absences and errors of omission.
It does not even discuss private banking, the most important "legal" and "respectable"
method of soliciting, invest- ing, parking and managing ill-gotten wealth. Private banking is
a big business. It specifically targets "high net-worth individuals", or the extremely wealthy,
all over the world. Crucial to it is the assur- ance of complete secrecy. As Srinivasan says
"in London, for instance, the Bank of America private bank is located in the mansion that
Charles I gave Nell Gwynn, but is unlisted in the London telephone directory, and unknown
to most officers of Bank of America London".
Two other elisions deserve mention: the routes typically taken by "round-tripping", to
which countries like Mauritius are pivotal; and the arms trade, with its enor- mous
commissions and kickbacks. The first issue is clearly important for India. Mauritius has
been the source of the high- est or second-highest flow of foreign investment into India for
more than a decade. Evidently, these funds come from somewhere other than that country's
tiny, sugar-based, economy. All Indian govern- ments have turned a blind eye to this: so
long as the money keeps coming, no questions should be asked.
The armaments trade is a major issue too. India has emerged as one of the top three buyers
of lethal weaponry in the world, with purchases of the order of $ 5 billion last year (it is
also trying to sell weapons to other third world countries). India's arms purchase bill is
reportedly likely to be as high as $ 95 billion spread over the next 15 years.
It is rare for any large arms deal in the world to go through without kickbacks, which are
then laundered. Recently, Rear Admiral Suhas Purohit, former deputy chief of Naval
Logistics, investigated over- invoicing and money laundering in Indian naval purchases
during the 1990s from Russia and the former Commonwealth of Independent States. There
was a substan- tial difference between the prices paid for these when they were routed
through shady arms dealers and agents, and the prices quoted to Indian logistics delegations
visiting Russia or the Ukraine.
Defence purchases have long ceased being a holy cow as far as the Indian public is
concerned. The Bofors scandal was a turning point. The "coffin" scam during the 1999
Kargil war took the process one step further. Today, there must be an even more critical and
clinical discussion of the links between billion-dollar arms deals and money laundering.
Lavado de dinero en perspectiva
Crimen y lavado de dinero: la perspectiva india por Jyoti
Trehan; Oxford University Press, Nueva Delhi, 2004; Pp 251, Rs
450.
PRIBUL BIDWAI
Enlace de la India
Perspectiva Analtica
De las cinco partes en las que se divide el libro, tres son en gran
medida descriptivas, pero tiles. Ellos describen el crecimiento
de diferentes tipos de delitos financieros y la evolucin del
lavado de dinero, y discuten las medidas que se han propuesto o
tomado para combatirlo. Analticamente, el autor es ms incisivo
al tratar con sistemas bancarios subterrneos o paralelos, como
hawala (y ms), y en su crtica de la Ley de Lavado de Dinero,
que acaba de ser aprobada en la India.
Errores de Omisin