Deferred Prosecution Agreements As A Tool For White-Collar Crime Enforcement In India: A Roadmap For ESG And Fintech Sectors
- IJLLR Journal
- 5 days ago
- 1 min read
Pragati Singh, B.A. (Policy Science) LL.B. (Hons.), National Law University Meghalaya
ABSTRACT
The explosion of ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) investing and the FinTech revolution have created a landscape for sophisticated white- collar crime: greenwashing fraud and cryptocurrency Ponzi schemes that subvert India’s contemporary enforcement architecture. The criminal justice system of India, with its three criminal branches, is too far behind in judicial backups, sitting with 90% competence-infested incompetence, and no proactive policies for another 1% development after World War II or in the post 2000 legal world, struggles to combat corporate malfeasance effectively due to the strong evidence burden of the identification doctrine and ‘too big to jail’ labyrinth. In essence, this paper is a proposal for a model Deferred Prosecution Agreement (DPA) for India, taking a few hints from global DPA submissions, especially the Crime and Courts Act 2013, said example under judicial oversight from the UK, the discretion-based American DPA system, and the French Convention Judiciaire d'Intérêt Public statutes to address systemic enforcement deficits comprehensively. It would be argued that a statutory DPA model for India, through a diligently court-supervised process-based approval, will demand cooperation, acceptance of permanent facts by the corporate, sanctions, reformative integrity compliance with independent oversight disaggregated from corporate control, and very stringent liability of individuals in keeping with the strict disciplinary doctrines of ESG and FinTech sectors.
Keywords: Deferred Prosecution Agreements; White-Collar Crime; FinTech; Corporate Criminal Liability; Judicial Oversight.
