ENS Economic Bureau By

NEW DELHI: Following the black money trail, the Special Investigative Team (SIT) headed by Justice MB Shah, has asked the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) if unaccounted money worth $505 billion has flowed out of India during 2004-13, when Congress-led UPA was in power.

“Further necessary action shall be taken by SIT after receipt of report from DRI,” the Finance Ministry said in a release on Monday. In its various report, SIT observed that trade-based money laundering was a major source through which illicit money is taken out of the country.

The Global Financial Integrity, in its report titled ‘Illicit Financial Flows from Developing Countries 2004-2013’ has estimated that illicit financial flows out of India for the period 2004-2013 to be the tune of $505 billion.

“The SIT obtained detailed calculations of country-wise illicit financial flows for each of these years from Global Financial Integrity,” the ministry statement said. The details, it said, have been sent to DRI on February 8, which has been asked to “verify the extent to which the calculations are correct.”

In its report, SIT had recommended that there should be institutional mechanism through a dedicated set up which examines mismatch between export-import data with corresponding data of other countries on a regular basis.

The SIT has also recommended that wherever possible, especially in case of commodities, a system for cross checking of prices of imports-exports with international prices may be done.

BoB Forex Scam: RBI Finds Irregularities in Transactions

Various irregularities by banks such as non-submission and inordinate delays in filing of Suspicious Transaction Reports (STRs), besides opening of accounts by several entities without fulfilling KYC norms, have been noticed by RBI. The observation came as part of inspection done by the central bank after last year’s Bank of Baroda case in which `6,100-crore import remittances were effected by its Ashok Vihar branch here. Both CBI and the Enforcement Directorate are probing the huge remittances to Hong Kong from the bank. After the BoB case, RBI wrote a confidential letter to chairmen and chief executives of all commercial banks asking them to review existing policies and effect necessary improvements where warranted to avoid recurrence of such irregularities. “While some banks have filed Cash Transaction Reports and STRs with Financial Intelligence Unit in time, in several cases either CTRs or STRs were not filed or filed with inordinate delay or closed at the bank level without verification and regard to frequency of reporting in such accounts.