According to the recent reports, a bill in the name of the Fugitive Economic Offenders Bill, 2017 is being prepared to be tabled in the next Parliamentary Session. The proposed legal document seeks to ease the process of the confiscation of the assets of those individuals who succeed in leaving the country or who refuse to return to the country after being involved in an offence exceeding the value of Rs 100 Crores.
The draft has been made be consist of a wide set of offences, includingĀ loan defaults, cheating and forgery, forged or fraudulent document of electronic records, duty evasion and non-repayment of deposits among a list of others.
The said bill has been drafted in furtherance of the recent Nirav Modi Scam calculating to an approximate value of a fraud of Rs 11,400 Crores with the Punjab National Bank.
While the preamble of the bill states that the document is “a Bill to provide for measures to deter economic offenders from evading the process of Indian law by remaining outside the jurisdiction of Indian courts, thereby preserving the sanctity of the rule of law in Ā India”, it defines the term “fugitive economic offender” as “any individual against whom a warrant for arrest in relation to an economic offence has been issued and the person has left the country and refuses to return to India to face criminal prosecution.”
It has to further be noted that theĀ the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU), which works under the Ministry of Finance, has been delegated the task of acting as the nodal agency, thereby being responsible for filing an application in the court for declaring an individual/individuals, fugitive economic offender and seek confiscation of their assets.
