Cabinet Approves Bill to Tighten Screw on Fugitive Loan Defaulters

Cabinet approves Fugitive Economic Offenders Bill for defaulters whose claims are more than Rs 100 crores.

India’s Cabinet drafts law that allows the government to take over all assets of loan defaulters and financial offenders who flee the country to evade prosecution in cases where claims are more than Rs 100 crore.

(Photo: PTI)

India’s Cabinet has given its nod to a draft law that allows the government to take over all assets of loan defaulters and financial offenders who flee the country to evade criminal prosecution in cases where total claims are more than Rs 100 crore.

The Cabinet approved the draft of the Fugitive Economic Offenders Bill in its meeting on Thursday, 1 March, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said in a media briefing.

The law, if passed in the Parliament, will allow the confiscation of all the assets owned in India by the economic offenders. These will also include benami assets or those held by proxies, Jaitley added.

We will try and make sure this is passed as expeditiously as possible because we can’t allow people to make a mockery of the law. That you first indulge in loot and then refuse to submit to the jurisdiction of our legal system.

Arun Jaitley, Finance Minister

The government’s move comes after a near Rs 12,700 crore fraud was unearthed at state-run Punjab National Bank where companies linked to billionaire jeweller Nirav Modi allegedly obtained fraudulent credit guarantees to borrow short-term loans from foreign banks. Modi had left India before the crackdown began. The case is being equated with that of Vijay Mallya, the former chairman of defunct Kingfisher Airlines, who India wants extradited from the UK in a loan default case.

The draft bill, which was approved by the Law Ministry in September, defines a fugitive economic offender as:

• An individual with an arrest warrant who has left India to avoid criminal prosecution.
• It also includes those who return to the country to face the law.

It will be accompanied with a list of scheduled offences, the finance minister said, and cover the cases where total claims are more than Rs 100 crore.

The bill is meant to “provide measures to deter economic offenders from evading the process of Indian law” by remaining outside the jurisdiction of the country's courts.

(The story was originally published on BloombergQuint)

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