April 7, 2016
With 500 Indians being named in the leaked Panama papers for alleged offshore holdings, the government today formed a multi-agency team to monitor exposes in this regard and vowed to take action against all unlawful accounts held abroad. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi discussed the issue with him this morning and on his advise the team has been set up comprising agencies like the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT), Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU).
The Special Investigation Team (SIT) on black money also said that it will investigate thoroughly the reported secret list exposed by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ).
“The multi-agency group will comprise various government agencies – the CBDT, FIU, FT&TR (Foreign Tax and Tax Research) and RBI. They will continuously monitor these (accounts) and whichever accounts are found to be unlawful, strict action as per existing laws will be taken,” Jaitley said. As many as 500 Indians have been named in a massive leak of 11.5 million tax documents exposing their secret offshore dealings. An investigation by The Indian Express claimed that Amitabh Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan are also named in the massive leak of documents from the secret files of Mossack Fonseca, a law firm based in tax haven Panama. Other noted Indians named in the leak are real estate giant DLF’s owner KP Singh and nine members of his family, and the promoters of Apollo Tyres and Indiabulls. Adani Group’s Gautam Adani’s elder brother Vinod Adani also feature on the list, the report said.