New York: India and the United States have stated both countries would reinvigorate action against terrorism-financing, tax evasion and money laundering after a high-level meeting on economic and financial partnership led by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. They said in a joint statement after the Eighth US-India Economic and Financial Partnership meeting on Thursday in Washington, which was also attended by Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell and Reserve Bank of India Governor Shaktikanta Das.

Sitharaman and Yellen jointly stressed "the importance of fighting financial crimes and on the effective implementation of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) standards to protect our financial systems from abuse". The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) is the Paris-based 49-member international organisation that fights terrorism financing and money laundering. sitharaman and Yellen SAID their countries looked forward to continuing to share information for tackling offshore tax evasion.

The meeting of the financial chiefs was the latest in a series of consultations by leaders of the two countries before and after last month's summit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Joe Biden as New Delhi and Washington draw closer. Leaders in defence and foreign affairs have met in the two countries in recent weeks.

They also took up the issue of tax avoidance by multinational companies, which is not necessarily illegal but results in revenue losses for some countries because others have low corporate tax levels to attract companies to situate themselves there. They called it a "significant accomplishment for updating the international tax architecture" to make it "more stable, fairer, and fit for purpose for the 21st century".

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