New Delhi, In the first official Indian figure ever mentioned on black money parked abroad, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Monday said an estimated 500 billion USD, which is equivalent to about Rs 24.5 lakh crore, of illegal money is stashed away in foreign tax havens by the Indian depositors. CBI director Ambar Pratap Singh made the disclosure at the inaugural function of the First Interpol Global Programme on Anti-Corruption and Asset Recovery. "India in particular has suffered from the flow of illegal funds to tax havens such as Mauritius, Switzerland, Lichtenstein, British Virgin Islands, etc. It is estimated that around 500 billion dollars of illegal money belonging to Indians is deposited in tax havens abroad," Singh said. "Largest depositors in Swiss banks are also reported to be Indians," he said. "Development of new methods of financial flows and communication technology have made it easier for the corrupt to conceal and stash away stolen wealth. On the other hand, differences in legal systems, high costs in coordinating investigations, inadequate international cooperation and bank secrecy laws have made the task difficult for the ...
Read Full Story

Moga, February 4 (Doaba News Service)- Rice traders in the state have been importing raw rice of poor quality from outside states and mixing it with locally produced rice, the milling of which is in progress these days. It’s strange that this is being done at a time when the state already has a buffer stock of rice over 80 lakh metric tonnes and paddy 95 lakh metric tonnes under the milling process in the state. But rice millers are allegedly mixing quantities of low-priced rice grains imported from other states with FCI stocks and selling the better rice in the open market at higher prices. The entire procurement of paddy in Punjab is sent to private millers for cleaning, shelling and polishing of grains. Millers return the finished product back to the FCI for the central pool. It is learnt that during the past two months, after the rice milling process began in the state, raw rice of various varieties worth crores of rupees is being imported from other states like Bihar, UP, Andhra Pradesh, and Karnataka by rice millers/traders, the maximum quantities of which are mixed in locally milled rice, and is being given to FCI stocks. This practice is going on particularly in ...
Read Full Story