The issue of corruption has attracted worldwide attention; even the United Nations has a convention against corruption. The World Bank has been focusing on fighting corruption for over a decade. In India, we have the Central Vigilance Commission and the Central Bureau of Investigation at the central level and State Vigilance Bureaus in the States, to fight this scourge. Yet they have not succeeded in checking the growth of corruption in a perceptible manner. Among various agencies, national and international, that fight corruption, the International Commission against Corruption set up in Hong Kong in the seventies is best known for its commitment and dedication in combating corruption.

Some estimates show that the Indian tax payer loses in the region of 7 billion U.S. dollars through bribes and other forms of corruption.  A common man in the street believes that he simply cannot get any public service without greasing someone’s palms.  Be it a street light, a road to his village, repairs to the school building, medicines in the village health centre, a permit to ply a commercial vehicle, a permit to register a small scale industrial unit, application to process a loan in any state financial institution, an urgent surgery in a government hospital, or even a complaint to file a First Information Report in a police station, the common man’s perception is that he has to pay bribe to get any of these public services.  Corruption is a highly distorted method of public choice, and brutally affects the poorest segments of society, for they do not have the capacity to pay bribes.  Corruption stalls progress by eating into funds marked for development

According to an international study, a good percentage of the funds meant for development goes into corruption. This affects the life of the common man adversely. In this respect, corruption can be called the biggest violator of human rights. That is not all. Corruption has become all pervasive.   Corruption is the main cause that keeps a large number of Indians below the poverty line. Be it the public distribution system,  the police, the municipal corporation, the district industries center or the office for registration of births and deaths,   the common man perceives them as dens of corruption. Officials in charge of government hospitals are known to sell medicines meant for free distribution to private hospitals, hurting the poor. They buy inferior quality of medicines by colluding with unscrupulous business persons, affecting the health of the poor. Corrupt public servants compromise with quality in the construction of roads and public buildings. Even the political elite indulge in different forms of corruption. And this adversely affects the state’s capacity to spend on development and other essentials that affects a citizen’s life.  While globalization has eased travel and communication, these advances are misused by the influential corrupt public servants to launder ill earned wealth.

Within the country, criminals who hoard wealth through corrupt practices conceal it in ingenious ways.  Indian investigators of corruption related offences have been battling to establish links between such property, often registered in the names of friends, relatives or dependents, and public servants, in order to convince jurisdictional courts, which demand standard of evidence beyond reasonable doubt, that the property is indeed the result of crime.  Rich and powerful influence peddlers have been packing off their ill-gotten wealth to international financial centers, taking protection under their strict codes of privacy laws. In such a scenario, efforts to stall such criminal activity, track criminals and trace the proceeds of the illicit wealth hinges on setting up appropriate safeguards at the national level, and coordinated international cooperation at the international level.

For international investigation, and to provide assistance to international investigators, we have amended the Criminal Procedure Code, providing for issuing, and receiving, Letter Rogatories. Indian investigators can get assets, identified prima facie as proceeds of corrupt practices or other crime, attached with a court order - but for a limited period of one year.  Within this period, the case will have to be submitted to the court in the form of a charge-sheet for judicial determination, quoting oral and documentary evidence, in accordance with the Indian Law, for the attachment to continue.  This property can be forfeited only if the case ends in conviction, and all appeals in the higher courts are exhausted. Aware as we are of the time consuming court procedures in India, such provisions have failed to deter corrupt public servants from hoarding wealth.