India, OECD to combat financial crimes: FM

Gandhinagar, July 17, 2023

Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Sunday said that India will launch a pilot project on tax and financial crime investigation in collaboration with Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). She was speaking at the G20 High-level Tax Symposium in Gandhinagar on the theme, ‘Combating tax evasion, corruption and money laundering.’

“Under the G20 presidency, India has taken the lead in building capacity in tax and financial crime investigation in the South Asian region in collaboration with OECD. As a first step to the initiative, it gives me immense pleasure to announce the launch of the pilot programme on tax and financial crime investigation on July 18, 2023, at the Regional Campus of National Academy of Direct Taxes,” she said.

Observing that G20 has helped spearhead a number of reforms to the global tax, anti-corruption and anti-money laundering architecture, she said that these have enhanced the law enforcement capacities of jurisdictions and helped them to collaborate with each other.

“It is also imperative that we remain alive to the emerging risks to financial transparency. In this context, the progress of work towards the development of the Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework and the update to the Common Reporting Standard is a welcome step,” said the FM.

“We should also examine closely whether there are any other classes of assets, wherein the information needs to be shared in a systematic way amongst jurisdictions.”

Senior experts from across the globe participated in the discussion on themes of common finance and reporting practices, international collaborations and emerging threats.

[The Times of India]