The recent recovery of INR 350 Crores worth cash is in news all over India. It is considered to be one of the biggest #haul by the concerned department. Still the raids is going on at different location and need to figure out the actual recovery amount. The person has a political background and a business by profession. But such a huge recovery has created a ripple in political arena as well as in general masses. It was the a quick response from the Enforcement Directorate, who conducted the Raids and recovered such un accounted cash.
Raids are generally defined as a surprise visit by the police or attacks. And this made me very curious to know :
"What actually happens with such huge cash recovered by different agencies?
Corruption is at peaks and, this is not the first time such raids are conducted. We often comes across many news with swanky photographs of seized money arranged to form letters like "ED" or "CBI" or "IT" during raids.
There were many raids happened earlier, but such a huge amount never been recovered from a single individuals. Now this raises a question,
Who can conduct a "raids"?
In India there are 3 main government Department who has the authority to carry out raids on finding irregularities like money laundering, scams, tax fraud etc.
Enforcement Directorate (ED): This agency, primarily focuses on economic offenses such as money laundering and foreign exchange violations. The teams primarily works on the complaint filed by the banks or financial institution about financial irregularities. These act as a tip off for the ED. The agency also swings into action on the request of Central Board of Investigation (CBI), India's premier Investigation agency. ED is assigned the responsibility for implementing economic law and combating economic crime in India.
Income Tax Department (IT) : The premier agency undertaking direct tax collection of the government of India. This agency functions under the Department of Revenue of the Ministry of Finance. They have all the information about various source of income for residents individuals, corporate, non residents, sole proprietor who works within India. They are primarily concerned with enforcing income tax laws and combating tax evasion within the country.
The Income Tax Department possesses the power of search and seizure on finding any tax irregularities or who avoid to pay tax. All income should be disclosed with the Income Tax Department, else it was considered to be illegal.
- Central Board Of Investigation (CBI): The premier Investigation team of the Central government. They can undertake any kind of Investigation and carry out raids if required. These agency also comes under the jurisdiction of the Supreme Courts or High Courts of India. These agency are authorized to carry out Investigation on instruction of any of the aforesaid.
Actions on Recovery
When the above agencies conduct Raids and seizes unaccounted money, they cannot just keep it on their office premises or surrender them to the government. The law always give a chances to the accused to comes up with their explanation. There is defined procedure to follow before the agency took some action. Following are the process followed on recovery of unaccounted cash :
Banking officials of the concerned department were called up to make the counting.
A detailed list of seized cash is prepared in presence of the concerned officials with the details of the recovered amount in all specific denominations recovered from the accused.
The cash is sealed in the boxes in the presence of independent witnesses.
The cash is then taken to the bank, where it is deposited under the agency's Provisional Deposit account
Neither the agency, nor the bank, nor the government has the right to use the seized money.
The agency issues a provisional attachment order.
The agency has 180 days of time period to prove the validity of the seizure. In case the agency fails to do so, the money gets returned to the accused.
The accused also gets a chance to explain the legality of the seized amount.
If the accused acquits, the cash gets returned and if convicted with no valid answer for such a huge haul, the money becomes government property under the "Prevention of Money Laundering Act" (PMLA) act.
This assures that, the cash will not be regularized immediately and there are certain protocol to keep it checks after the seizure. Now this leaves me with another set of question. With such a huge haul of money,
*can the officials do mishandling of the cash, or steal some money for personal purpose?
I doubt so, but anything is possible where Corruption exists on large scale and such cache of cash recovered. Who going to measure a drop of water from vast ocean.