Leaked Panama papers: govt welcomes expose; to monitor cases
04 April, New Delhi
Following directions from Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the Finance Ministry today constituted a special multi-agency group consisting of officers from investigative unit of Central Board of Direct Taxes CBDT, Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) and Foreign Tax and Tax Research (FT & TR) division and representative of RBI to monitor the flow of information in cases of over 500 Indians whose names have appeared in leaked Panama papers.
This announcement was made by the Finance Ministry in a statement which welcomed the expose by media, saying this will help in detecting and preventing generation of black money
.”As per the directions of the Prime Minister given today, a special multi-agency group is being constituted consisting of officers from Investigative Unit of CBDT, FIU and FT & TR division and representative of RBI. The group will monitor the flow of information in each one of the case,” the Finance Ministry said.
It assured that the government will take all necessary actions as required to get maximum information from all sources including from foreign governments to help in the investigation process.
The leaked papers belong to Mossack Fonseca, a law firm headquartered in tax haven Panama, known for its factory-like production of offshore companies for its worldwide clientele of the ultra rich people.”In the context of the commitment of the Central Government to bring out undisclosed money both from abroad and from within the country, information brought out by any investigative journalism is welcome,” the statement said.
It reminded that in the past also based on the investigative journalism of International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) in 2013 in which the links of 700 Indian persons were shown to have business connection with off-shore entities, the Revenue Department has been able to identify 434 persons out of them as Indian residents.
It added that 184 persons out of these have also admitted their relationship with such offshore entities/transactions. The statement added that although, in the previous report of ICIJ, information relating to the financial transactions/bank accounts was not available, the Government authorities have detected credit in the undisclosed foreign accounts of such Indian persons in excess of Rs 2,000 crore.
“As many as 52 prosecution complaints under the provision of Income-Tax Act have been filed against offenders so far,” it added.