IT To Root-Out CORRUPTION
By: Valerian Texeira
(First Published in February 2008…. 2011 Revised edition)
This Paper basically contends that; ‘almost all economic crimes popularly known as corruption, occurs primarily because of the economic system facilitating surreptitious or illicit money transactions. The CASH MONEY PLAYS THE KEY FACILITATOR ROLE, as it enables the unscrupulous people to make the illicit money transactions and keep it without leaving any concrete records or evidences so to escape from its public, legal scrutiny. It is also called as “Willful Hiding” or concealment of money. Thankfully the good news is that the Information Technology (IT) today with its innovative “Electronic (E)Money Transaction” including its most recent Near field Communication (NFC) mobile phone money transaction technology, if made mandatory in combination with ‘Biometric Identity’ in all bank accounts, can enable the Governments to root-out most economic crimes. Only if there is a political will to get it done’.
Introduction:
Thanks to the Information Technology (IT) era that our world galloping in today. With its wide-spreading broadband Internet connections, ushering in a new economic age of E-commerce, E-business. Most important is its innovative electronic or the e-money (“credit card” its partial form) transaction technology, IN WHICH THE MONEY PAYMENT/RECEIPT IN-BETWEEN ANY TWO PARTIES NECESSARILY CONDUCTED THROUGH A “THIRD PARTY”, A BANK OR FINANCIAL INSTITUTION THAT PROVIDES THIS MOST IMPORTANT “FINANCIAL SERVICE” AND IN THE PROCESS ALL ITS MONEY TRANSACTION “INFORMATION” GETS INSTANTLY RECORDED in the digital data storage of this registered public financial institution (Bank). Under which it is impossible for anyone to cheat, deny or hide the true accounts of their money and all its transaction track records. Thereby when ordered for its legal enquiry, public investigation of economic crimes, all the money transaction records can be made available before the judicial authorities and the general public to prosecute and punish the guilty behind any reasonable doubts. This provides the historical opportunity to the Governments to completely Root-Out most (if not all) of the economic crimes or corruption from the human society.
Traditional Reason For Hiding CASH Money -- Its Main Drawback:
Traditionally the genuine reason for people to keep their money hidden and not to display its true amounts to the public is to PROTECT it from getting stolen, burgled or looted. Most importantly the fear of getting robbed, or lost while carrying it around for the transaction. Nevertheless, from ages the cash money remained indispensable or quintessential for the economy to conduct the value (commodity) exchange or the trade most efficiently. However today this newly emerging innovative Electronic Money Transaction (EMT) system can fulfill all the needs of the traditional CASH money transaction far more efficiently. Together with, it would entirely remove all such potential threats or the genuine fears of robbery, stealing, theft, by this revolutionary digital monetary system.
By the way, the main drawback of the traditional cash money transaction is that it is impossible practically to keep and maintain the records, accounts of ALL cash money transactions occurring in every place and at every time 24 hours in a day and 365 days in a year for all its legal, public scrutiny. Its paper work and storage cost alone would be so enormous let alone its labor cost of keeping the accounts and other factors. It is only the Information Technology today with its revolutionary E-money transaction record keeping system, practically enables the society to accomplish it. This document marks its beginning.
Money Basically A Public TRUST:
Money is basically a public TRUST. It puts a social responsibility and the legal obligation on all those who owns it over and above a given (taxable) limit that they should maintain and submit its truthful accounts before the designated public authorities for its due legal scrutiny and not to use it for any unlawful, illicit purposes. However in the conventional cash money delivery between any two parties got no such effective mechanism to monitor and record the money movements and know all its present locations all the times to prevent it from getting misused. Thus it becomes possible for the unscrupulous individuals to totally hide its true account and submit false accounting before the legal authorities in breach of its public trust, and engage into many kinds of its “misuse”, clandestine business practices, criminal use or the surreptitious money dealings, illicit money transactions.
Cash Money Hiding Ability Breeds Corruption:
Of course, most of the cash money transaction, business in our world conducted lawfully. However a significant number of this cash money amounting to enormous sums kept hidden away from the legal scrutiny or collected and employed unlawfully called “black money”. The number one among is the ubiquitous economic crime of tax fraud or the tax evasion. Along with its cheating and depriving the public revenue it also puts the other people around in the money market competition into a very disadvantageous position thus pressurizes, encourages or tempts many among them also to commit such crimes. Same is true with other economic crimes and the most common among is the BRIBERY. There are number of other notorious economic crimes like money extortion, money-laundering, narcotic or illegal drug trade, human-trafficking, kidnapping for ransom money etc, I will come to some more of them in the latter sections. It is mainly due to the cash money (currency) basically having this “concealable” property that gives its possessor the ability to hide it from its legal scrutiny thus amass huge amount of illicit or black money and wealth. It begins to spoils the entire economic system, start to breed corruption. Corruption breeds more corruption, crime begets crime.
Cyber Technology Great Promise To Root-Out Corruption:
The world today speeding fast into the digital money cyber economic era. E business’s (Amazon, e-bay), Credit Cards, ATMs getting popular everywhere. However most of the every day money transactions buying and selling trade payments still dominated by the century old printed paper cash currency notes, which are getting more and more inefficient, burdensome and getting corrupted day by day in the face of the sheer volume of growing economy. The economic crimes get boosted with the progression of cyber economy where huge sums of ill-gotten money can be transferred from one bank to another banks through fake or bogus bank accounts, credit card frauds, banking frauds, huge financial scams getting out of the national governments control, many times spiraling into deep economic crisis’s. Corruption, poverty, unemployment and the INFLATION everywhere! The public demands the government to control it, blames it for the failure and elects a new government. The new government comes with the promise to control it but no governments able to do it so far. Fortunately however now the same cyber technology that gives the worlds Governments the nightmare of growing economic crimes at the same time can also offer a great cyber technological or IT solution to prevent all the economic crimes.
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