Transparency in note ban would have been instrument of fraud: Jaitley

TIL Desk/Business/New Delhi/ Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has defended the government for maintaining secrecy over demonetisation before its announcement, saying transparency in this case would have been the ‘greatest instrument of fraud’.

Jaitley, who is on a week-long visit to the United States to attend the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, said that announcing this major initiative in advance could have resulted in people buying gold, diamond and land and going through various kinds of transactions with the cash they had.

“Transparency is a very nice word. But transparency in this case (of demonetisation) would have been the greatest instrument of fraud,” Jaitley told students of the Columbia University in New York. The finance minister was responding to a question that why Prime Minister Narendra Modi kept the demonetisation plan a closely guarded secret with only a handful of top officials privy to the move.