Indians have stashed an estimated $500 billion of illegal money in tax havens abroad, says chief of the country's premier investigation agency.
"It is estimated that around $500 billion of illegal money belonging to Indians is deposited in tax havens abroad. Largest depositors in Swiss Banks are also reported to be Indians," Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) Director A.P. Singh said at the inauguration of the first Interpol global program on anti-corruption and asset recovery in the Indian capital New Delhi on Monday.
He said getting information about such illegal transactions was a time- consuming process as investigators had to peel each layer by sending judicial requests to the country where such deposits had been made.
"Fifty-three per cent of the countries said to be least corrupt by the Transparency International Index are offshore tax havens, where most of the corrupt money goes. The tax havens include New Zealand which is ranked as the least corrupt country, Singapore ranked number five and Switzerland number seven," Singh was quoted by the PTI news agency as saying.
He said there was a lack of political will in the leading tax haven states to part with the information because they were aware of the extent to which their economies had become "geared to this flow of illegal capitals from the poorer countries."
Singh said tracing, freezing, confiscation and repatriation of stolen assets was a legal challenge, a complex process which required expertise and political will.
"Managing the asset recovery investigation is complex, time-consuming, costly and most importantly requires expertise and political will. There are many obstacles to asset recovery. Not only is it a specialized legal process filled with delays and uncertainty, but there are also language barriers and a lack of trust when working with other countries," he said.
Singh said the World Bank had estimated cross border flow of money from criminal activities and tax evasion around $1.5 trillion, of which $40 billion was bribe paid to government servants in developing countries.
For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com
Political News
May 01, 2026 15:54 ET Central banks dominated the economics news flow this week with almost all major ones announcing their latest policy decisions and many boosted expectations for a rate hike in June. In other news, several countries released the preliminary data for first quarter economic growth. In the U.S., comments by Fed Chair Jerome Powell were also in focus as his term ends this month.