Saying corruption was a major governance issue, CBI director A.P. Singh said Monday that “complicated systems and procedures” were a “fertile breeding ground” for the menace. Recalling a verse from ancient Indian scripture saying “if the king is immoral, so will be his subjects”, Mr Singh said development programmes must be designed to provide for more transparency and accountability.

Speaking at the first Interpol global anti-corruption and asset recovery programme at the CBI headquarters here, Mr Singh said: “Corruption has become a major governance challenge. There is no single remedy to fight it... the battle has to be fought at many levels.” He added: “Systems and procedures which are complicated, centralised and discretionary are a fertile breeding ground for the evil of corruption.”
The CBI director claimed Indians had stashed “an estimated $500 billion (around Rs 25 lakh crores) of illegal money in tax havens abroad... The largest depositors in Swiss banks are reported to be Indians”. India, he said, had suffered from the flow of illegal funds to tax havens like Mauritius, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and the British Virgin Islands.
The CBI chief said there was a “lack of political will” in leading tax haven states to part with information as they are aware of the extent to which their economies had become geared to this flow of illegal capital from poorer countries. He said 53 per cent of countries described as the least corrupt by Transparency Internati-onal are offshore tax havens, saying this included New Zealand, often ranked as the least corrupt country. In some recent high-profile cases investigated by the CBI, it was revealed the money had first gone to Dubai, Singapore and Mauritius, and from there it was diverted to tax havens, Mr Singh said.
Speaking on the occasion, minister of state for personnel and public grievances V. Narayanasamy said: “Corruption is anti-poor and anti-national. It has the potential of destroying the country’s social fabric.”