Mumbai, the financial capital of the country, shares a prominent position among top cities of the world where economic offences are on the rise. A more alarming situation concerns the recovery of property lost to economic crimes, which is appalling.
According to data available with the Mumbai police, in the past two years, the city police has not been able cross the one per cent recovery mark of property involved in economic offences that are referred to as white-collar crimes. These crimes include educational frauds, bank frauds, financial scams, real estate frauds, job rackets, share market frauds, money laundering, multi-level marketing scams, ponzi schemes, etc.
In the year 2012, 132 of such cases were reported and all were detected. Properties involved in these cases (of fraud, scams, cheating) amounted to worth `1,165.11 crore, but only properties worth `9.32 crore could be recovered. In the year 2011, such white-collar crimes involved properties worth `872.98 crore and properties worth only `1.53 crore could be recovered. Only in the year 2010 did the recovery aspect cross the one per cent mark as properties worth `4.99 crore were recovered against the total property worth `334.53 crore involved in the crime.
However, the police says that it is unfair to judge their performance only on the basis of statistics as these numbers are subject to constant updating. “These statistics are those figures where the case is reported to the police and recovery is made in the early stages of the investigation. These figures are not updated regularly with every development in the case,” said a crime branch officer.
“Generally, victims approach us very late with complaints and investigation of financial offences requires a lot of paper work and documentation. The delay in reporting such an offence gives the accused enough time to dispose off the property and destroy the evidence,” said Himanshu Roy, joint commissioner (crime).
Another factor for less recovery in such cases is lengthy court procedure. “Generally, in economic offences the chances of recovery of cash is less and most of the recovery takes place after properties of the accused are attached and then auctioned on the court’s order. It’s a lengthy process that takes time and we cannot do anything in that,” said Mumbai police spokesperson DCP Satyanarayan Choudh-ary.
There are other reasons too, behind less recovery of property in economic offences. Many a times the police comes across scams wherein the accused invested the siphoned off money in foreign countries. “They carry out scams here and invest the money in projects in companies located in some other country. The accused sometimes also transfer the ill-gotten wealth to foreign bank accounts. We cannot make recoveries in such cases until and unless we have bank policies and tie-ups with authorities in those nations, which can allow us easy access to seize property,” said S.P. Yadav, additional DG of state CID
Lack of stringent laws too, worsens the situation. One of the major reasons for the low recovery rate in such white-collar crimes is the lack of provisions that allow seizures of immovable property. Many white-collar criminals convert their money into immovable property. “(Present) law cannot permit seizure of imm-ovable property. It can be only done in the Maharashtra Protection of Investors Deposit (MPID) Act cases. We carry out investigations under the Indian Penal Code sections, which does not allow seizure of immovable property,” said inspector general Sanjay Saxsena, who earlier headed the Economic Offences Wing of Mumbai police.