Economic crime is not a modern invention but a long-standing vice that has merely assumed new disguises, Chief Justice of India Justice Surya Kant said in his Closing Address at the 43rd International Symposium on Economic Crime at Jesus College, Cambridge.
Recalling a fraud from the 4 Century BC involving Greek grain merchant Hegestratos, who sank his own empty ship, to claim maritime insurance, the CJI said the affliction predates recorded history. Citing global estimates, he noted that the world launders enough money in a single year “to buy every one of the eight billion people alive on the planet today a modest laptop.”
“Of that immense tide of illicit wealth, by the most generous reckoning, less than one unit in a hundred is ever recovered,” the CJI said. “For every hundredth parts of that wealth, ninety-nine are simply referred to in speeches and reports, while only one part is ever actually put right.”
Moving from rhetoric to institutional interdiction, the CJI outlined India’s framework. He detailed the three-tier system under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) – provisional attachment by the Enforcement Directorate, confirmation by the Adjudicating Authority, and trial by Special Courts – stressing that “no single institution within this process is permitted to both accused and convict”.
He highlighted the Fugitive Economic Offenders Act, 2018, applicable for offences above Rs 100 crore, which allows confiscation of domestic and overseas properties if the accused fails to appear within six weeks. “In essence, flight no longer grants immunity for assets left behind,” he said.
On judicial balancing, the CJI acknowledged allegations of misuse of PMLA. He cited Pankaj Bansal v. Union of India, where the Supreme Court mandated that grounds of arrest must be given in writing, and Arvind Kejriwal v. CBI, a judgment he authored, where bail was granted on the principle that “prolonged pre-trial detention should not be transformed into punishment under a different guise”.
The Court has also taken suo motu cognizance of the digital arrest scam, where fraudsters impersonate police or judges on video calls to extort money.
Referring to the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016, CJI Surya Kant said India’s system now ensures “the victim’s restitution need not be held hostage to the pace of the prosecutor’s case.”
Striking a global note, he said illicit wealth “moves faster than our treaties can be ratified” and no jurisdiction can pursue it alone. The tools—non-conviction-based forfeiture, unexplained wealth orders, beneficial ownership registries—already exist, he said, what is missing is “the willingness to use them together”.
He concluded with a reference to the Arthashastra: “Let the 40 ways of stealing enshrined in the Arthashastra now be enriched by 40 better ways of tracing, freezing and returning.”
“The measure of this Symposium’s success will not be the eloquence with which we described the problem this week, but the diligence with which each of us, returning to our own jurisdictions, endeavour to put an end to it,” the CJI said.
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