The Lok Sabha on Wednesday passed the Fugitive Economic Offenders Bill, which will now replace the Ordinance by the same name promulgated by the President in April.
“In so many years, we saw that there is a law [to tackle fugitive economic offenders], but the time taken to carry out the due process showed us that there is a need for strict and speedy procedures,” Finance Minister Piyush Goyal said while responding to the Opposition’s objections to the Bill.
“It was necessary to bring this legislation as an ordinance to ensure that this process was not halted, and we show that we are strict about this issue.”
The Bill empowers special courts to direct the Central government to confiscate all the assets belonging to a fugitive economic offender, including those assets that are proceeds of the crime and that do not belong to the offender. The legislation gains importance against the background of high-profile cases where individuals such as Vijay Mallya and Nirav Modi escaped the country.
No remedy: Opposition
The Opposition raised several objections to the Bill, including that it did not do any more than what’s already provided for by existing legislation, that the ₹100 crore limit above which the law becomes applicable was untenable, and that the provision in the Bill disqualifying a fugitive economic offender from availing the Indian judicial system for civil cases was unconstitutional.
“I’m sorry to say that there is absolutely no indication in the Bill of a remedy or even a slightly progressive step to address the malaise in our regulatory and financial institutions,” Congress MP from Thiruvananthapuram Shashi Tharoor said. “Instead, we have a poorly crafted draft... the entire exercise reeks of tokenism and political double-speak.”
In response, Mr. Goyal said that the ₹ 100 crore limit was placed so that big offenders could be tackled quickly. “Offenders below that limit will continue to be tackled by the existing various laws and courts.”