‘White Paper on Black Money’, prepared by the Ministry of Finance, was presented in Lok Sabha on the 21st of May 2012. The report seeks to address the scale at which unaccounted wealth exists at present and the response of the Government to curb governance and accountability failures (the full report can be found here). It begins with an emphasis on clarifying concepts, followed by a detailed historical perspective on illicit money flows in the last few decades, and also touches on the subject of institutional strength and transparency to restrict illegitimate economic activity.
The report looks at black money as ‘wealth earned through illegal means as well as legal income that are concealed from public authorities’. An interesting point made was the level at which manipulation of financial records take place and the procedures involved in misrepresenting particular amounts of money.
