UNIQUE ECONOMIC OFFENDER CODE

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Context

• Central government will soon come out with a unique Unique Economic Offender Code for each individual or company accused of economic offences. The code will be similar to a 'billa' number that is used to identify prisoners.

About

• The identification number used to spot the economic offenses will be called 'Unique Economic Offender Code'.
• The code will be specific to each offender and will be linked with his/her Aadhaar number, in case of an individual, or PAN in case of a company.
• The Central Economic Intelligence Bureau under the finance ministry has made a database of about 2.5 lakh economic offenders.
• The 'Unique Economic Offender Code' for each accused will help quickly launch a multi-agency probe against them as against the current practice of waiting for one agency to complete its probe and file a chargesheet or prosecution complaint before the same is shared with others for further investigation.

How will the 'Unique Economic Offender Code' work?

• The 'Unique Economic Offender Code' will be alpha-numeric which will be PAN- or Aadhaar-based for companies and individuals to tag all cases of economic offences against them and have a 360-degree profile.
• The unique code will be a system-generated code that will emerge once the police or any central intelligence or enforcement agency feeds data into the under-construction central repository of NEOR - National Economic Offence Records.
• This means people like fugitive Vijay Mallya, former finance minister P Chidambaram, or former Delhi deputy CM Manish Sisodia and his colleague Satyendar Jain, all facing money laundering charges, will be identified with a Unique Economic Offender Code.

National Economic Offence Records

• The NEOR, is a central repository of all economic offences that will share data related to each economic offender with all central and state intelligence and enforcement agencies.
• The NEOR is being built with a budget of around Rs 40 crore and the Central Economic Intelligence Bureau has been given the task of coordinating and completing the project with the help of the National Informatics Centre.
• NEOR will be completed in the next 4-5 months and all data from central and state agencies will be migrated to the national repository using the API (application programming interface) software, reducing any scope for manual interference.
• A high-level team of the Paris-based inter-governmental watchdog is scheduled to visit the country in the next few months to evaluate India's legislative and enforcement actions against money laundering and terror financing.

https://www.timesnownews.com/business-economy/economy/unique-economic-offender-code-how-modi-govt-plans-to-identify-economic-offenders-through-aadhaar-pan-card-details-article-100286331