GP
Gaurav Pundir
Department of Commerce G20-Cell, India
Deputy Secretary, Indian G20 Presidency
Description
Gaurav is a member of the Indian Revenue Service and holds around a decade of professional experience working for the country’s Income-tax Department in various capacities. He is an ace financial crime investigator and conducted multiple search and seizure actions as a Deputy Director of Investigations during 2012-17. Basis the electronic and documentary evidences gathered from offshore financial centers leveraging the OECD-Global Forum Exchange of Information Upon Request (EOIR), he was instrumental in detecting unaccounted foreign assets and income of the Indian taxpayers to the tune of $ 5 million.
From 2017-19, he served as an Under Secretary with the Central Board of Direct Taxes – India’s apex direct tax administration body wherein he had handled the first batch of financial data received under the OECD- Automatic Exchange of Information (AEOI) standards.
Later, during 2021-22, while working as a Joint Commissioner in the international taxation vertical, he handled tax audits of more than 100 non-resident companies/MNEs and individuals. He had successfully tackled tax avoidance and profit shifting by MNEs through rigorous analysis of financial statements and documents and interpretation of tax laws and bilateral tax treaties. It ranged from establishing Place of Effective Management (POEM) of an offshore investor company in India, to determining the true nature of receipts derived by a global cloud-services providing MNE and alleviating tax risks presented by an MNE through artificial splitting of a composite contract by establishing a Fixed Place PE in India. He has extensive experience of harmonizing domestic tax laws and tax treaty provisions while assessing cases under his tax jurisdiction.
Currently, since 2022, as a Deputy Secretary, he is orchestrating the priorities of the Indian G20 Presidency on global trade and investment issues under the G20 Trade and Investment Working Group. He successfully organized four Working Meetings in which more than 300 delegates from G20 members, invitees and international organizations participated. He had formulated action-oriented and concrete outcomes for the Presidency which were focused on evolving principles for paperless trade, ensuring seamless flow of information for MSMEs and devising a mapping framework to ascertain opportunities and vulnerabilities in sectoral and product GVCs. The outcomes were endorsed by the G20 Trade and Investment Ministers and included in G20 New Delhi Leaders Declaration as well.
Gaurav holds a B.Tech. (Hons.) in Electrical Engineering from IIT-BHU and a Masters of Public Administration from Columbia University.
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