August 28, 2017
Nearly 10 months after India’s unprecedented ban on high value notes that was designed to tackle entrenched corruption, bribery continues to oil the wheels of business in Asia’s third-largest economy, according to a U.S. risk management firm that advises foreign investors.
Gifting of land, houses, luxury watches and sponsoring expensive travel abroad are now the preferred bribes as tax authorities clamp down on high value cash transactions. And for India’s vast shadow economy, estimated by McKinsey & Co. at a fourth of the $2 trillion economy, the cash ban has hardly made a dent.