The enormous publicity related to black money has brought about a strange result. It has diverted attention from the ongoing corruption cases. Black money is being referred to as some entity with a life of its own disconnected from everything else. This in turn has led to a process of investigation which is truly bizarre. Investigators try to discover black money accounts. After doing that they try to identify the account holders. Having done that they try to find out how they acquired the black money. This is putting the cart before the horse! The simple straightforward process should be to unearth corruption. After doing that nail the culprits. After apprehending the guilty individuals recover the black money they acquired through corruption. Why does the government not pursue this simple and effective way of recovering black money?

The public should ask and the government should focus, if it is at all serious about recovering black money, on expediting investigation and prosecution of all pending corruption cases. Once investigation nails the culprit he or she can be grilled and bargained with to trace all the ill gotten wealth and recover most if not all of it. Instead, all the current hype about black money has diverted all public attention from corruption mega scams. Even those guilty and on bail are merrily leading comfortable lives. Instead of fruitless searches in foreign banks why are not these guilty persons grilled and their money either in part or in whole recovered?

During the last ten years there has been hundreds of corruption cases registered and investigated by the CBI. 2G Spectrum scam, Coagatel scam, Commonwealth Games scam, Adarsh Housing scam, Westland helicopter scam ---- the list seems endless. Each year the number of corruption cases increases. In 2013 the CBI registered 583 corruption cases. If the record of registered corruption cases is taken before the last ten years of UPA rule the number of scams and the black money stashed away is absolutely staggering. Despite available evidence no effort is made by the government to corner the suspects and the guilty to recover the money. Even the 2 billion plus foreign account in Rajiv Gandhi’ name reported by credible and reputed Swiss sources has never led to any questioning by the government. Even the official statement by the Russian government that KGB money was regularly paid to Rajiv Gandhi’s family has never resulted in any Indian official investigation or follow up action.

The government, the media and the entire political establishment is busy chasing black money but ignoring the scams that create black money. Those politicians involved in the scams must be secretly laughing their heads off.