Black money: Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi outside the Supreme Court. On a day when the Central Government submitted its list of black money account holders in foreign banks to the Supreme Court, head of the Special Investigation Team (SIT) probing the case Justice MB Shah said that there is no new detail in the report submitted by the government.
“I don’t think there is anything significant in the report. The list is the same as before. It was known to us. We have to question the people in the list,” Shah said adding that there is no new outcome of the investigations that have taken place in the past few days.
He also said that all the facts in the report were already known to the SIT. “All these facts that have been revealed were already known to the members of SIT. We should be able to file a satisfactory report in time,” he added.
Shah asserted that the probe is underway and filing a report will take time. “The probe is a difficult one. there is no eye wash. The report will take time. We have already filed the first report in August. I’m hopeful that we should be able to file the final report by next year,” he said.
He also backed the Centre by saying that he did not feel that the government was trying to protect anyone who is named in the list.
Earlier in the day, the Central government led by Narendra Modi submitted a list of names of 627 black money account holders to the Supreme Court.
The court refused to open the sealed envelope saying that only the SIT Chairman and Vice Chairman can open the sealed envelope containing the names of account holders.The list has names, account numbers and the amount of money in each account. The apex court has now directed the SIT to submit a status report by November 30.
Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi said that the list has been provided by the French government of those who have accounts in the HSBC Bank, Geneva. “The deadline for completion of all investigations into the black money cases is March 31, 2015,” he said. The Attorney General added that the maximum people in the list are residents in India and rest are NRIs.
Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi handed over two sealed envelopes to a bench of Chief Justice H.L. Dattu, Justice Ranjana Prakash Desai and Justice Madan B. Lokur. One envelope had the list of names and the correspondence between the Indian and French government, while the other had the status report of the steps taken by the government.
Rohatgi said that half of these account holders are Indian residents and the other half are NRIs. These accounts are those up to 2006.
He said that action has been initiated and some account holders have admitted to their accounts, some have paid taxes and some have denied having any such accounts.
The attorney general also noted that the Income Tax Act has been amended to extend the limitation period up to March 31, 2015, for recovering taxes from these account holders. Under earlier provisions, the limitation period was six years which in these cases came to an end in 2012.
He told the court that government had no intention to hold back any information or names and was open to any inquiry by the Central Bureau of Investigation, Income Tax authorities or any other agency.
The court directed that the sealed envelope with the names be given to Special Investigation Team (SIT) chairman Justice M.B. Shah and vice chairman Justice Arijit Pasayat.
The SIT was directed to be set up by the apex court’s July 4, 2011 order, but the notification was only issued May 29 this year after the court May 23 gave the government a week’s time to comply with its orders.
The court said the SIT will move into the matter in accordance with the law. “We permit the SIT to deal with the matter in accordance with law,” the court said in its order.
All the 627 accounts are at HSBC Bank in Geneva – the details of which India got from the French government.
These are also known as stolen data and when the Indian government approached the Swiss authorities for assistance, they refused to help, saying that they don’t deal with stolen data.
However, HSBC Bank said that if the Indian authorities get an no-objection certificate from the account holders, then it would share the details. About 50-60 account holders gave their consent.
As Rohatgi gave the court the list of names, it asked about the information that government had received from Germany in March 2009.
He then told the court that German tax authorities had given 26 names. Out of that prosecution has been launched against 18, while the others were found to holding genuine accounts.
Rohatgi told the court that the government has “only one request that is according to terms of the treaties entered by the government with other countries there is a confidentiality clause and nothing should be done that may impede our ability to get information from these countries and other countries” on foreign accounts of Indian citizens in future.
To this, the court said it had “no intention of causing any embarrassment to the government”. “We will send all these names to the SIT and ask them to proceed in accordance with law.”
Rohatgi said that the government had already given the list of the names along with other details to SIT.
Directing further hearing of the matter Dec 3, the court said that the SIT team will submit its status report on the steps taken by it in pursuance to the list of 627 account holders.
On Tuesday, the central government was directed by the Supreme Court to furnish in a sealed envelope the list of all individuals and entities in its possession who have accounts in overseas banks, legitimate or otherwise.
The directive to this effect came a day after the government gave the court the names of seven individuals and one company, alleging they had funds in bank accounts abroad over which proceedings had been initiated for tax evasion.
Senior counsel Ram Jethmalai, who – along with others – is a PIL petitioner on whose plea the court had passed the July 4, 2011, order constituting the SIT urged the court that the government should desist from employing double taxation avoidance agreements for stonewalling the information sought by them and DTAAs were a fraud on the nation.
The Congress said the central government can’t take credit for revealing names of people holding black money abroad when it did so on a Supreme Court directive.
“It is wrong for anyone to take credit for anything that is (being done) by the order of the Supreme Court,” party spokesman Abhishek Singhvi said.
Speaking after the government submitted 627 names of foreign bank account holders to the apex court, Singhvi wanted to know where was the illegally stashed cash the BJP had pledged to bring back after taking power.
“The BJP kept saying we will bring back so many crores of rupees and put it in your pocket… Have they put even Rs.55 in anyone’s pocket? Where is the money they promised?” he asked.
The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) accused the government of sparing the “big fishes” holding black money abroad.
AAP leader Arvind Kejriwal said the revelations of black money account holders should not be selective. “There should not be selective revelation of names. The big fishes are being let off,” he told the media.
Kejriwal Tuesday moved an application in the Supreme Court seeking to be heard in the black money case. The former Delhi chief minister claimed he had personal knowledge of some people who have stashed black money in foreign banks.
The unearthing of untaxed income Indians have allegedly stashed away in foreign accounts could add up to $35 billion to the country’s foreign exchange reserves, a Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BofA-ML) report said Wednesday.
“Reports place Indians’ deposits in Swiss accounts in an astonishingly wide range of $2 billion-2 trillion. We have worked with an estimate of capital flight of about $200 billion based on a recent research study,” the BOfa-ML report said.
“If even half of this is unearthed, it could add $30-35 billion (three to four months of current import cover) to forex reserves over time, if taxed at, say, 30-35 percent,” it added.
The report cites a recent study by Raghbendra Jha and Duc Nguyen Truong of the Australian National University, which estimated India’s total capital flight at over $186 billion during 1998-2012. (IANS)