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SC: Govt should target black money hoarders
R Sedhuraman
Legal Correspondent

New Delhi, January 19
The Supreme Court today directed the Central Government to target all those who had “plundered the nation” and stashed away “mind-boggling” amounts of black money in secret bank accounts in Switzerland and other tax havens, without restricting the investigations to a few individuals or to merely unearth tax evasion. A Bench comprising Justices B Sudershan Reddy and SS Nijjar asked Solicitor General Gopal Subramanium that the investigations being conducted in the wake of PILs filed in the SC on the issue should go beyond mere recovery of the tax that had been evaded.

Switzerland may reveal info soon Geneva: A Swiss Parliamentary Committee has given the go-ahead to the revised tax treaty between India and Switzerland that would eventually allow the Indian government access to secret Swiss bank accounts of Indian tax evaders. The amendments to the treaty will now be placed before the Swiss Parliament for final approval. — PTI

The Bench made the clarification after senior counsel Anil Divan, appearing for the petitioners, took strong exception to the government focusing all its attention on the issue of tax evasion despite the strong possibility that the black money could have been generated through corruption and smuggling of arms and drugs by terrorists and other mafia syndicates.

The SG handed over to the Bench some documents in a sealed cover, containing the names of some individuals who had secret accounts in a bank in the city-state of Liechtenstein, bordering Switzerland. The government had obtained the documents from Germany, which had procured it from Liechtenstein in connection with tax evasion cases against its own citizens. Since the documents contained information relating to people from other countries as well, India had approached Germany under the Double Taxation Avoidance Agreement (DTAA) seeking details concerning Indians.

The PIL petitioners, including former Law Minister Ram Jethmalani and former Punjab police chief JF Ribeiro, contended that the government had deliberately obtained the details under DTAA, which had a secrecy clause, with a view to keeping these under wraps.

The Bench repeatedly asked the SG whether this was all that the government could obtain since the filing of the PILs far back in April 2009. The SG said efforts were on to conclude DTAAs with other countries, including Switzerland. The SC again wanted to know as to why the efforts were being made only on the tax front and not from the crime angle. The SG said detection of tax evasion was given paramount importance by all the countries.

The Bench made it clear that the government’s effort should be to get information about the entire amount of black money taken out of the country by every individual and being held in tax havens all over the world. According to the petitioners, the amount held in foreign banks is about $1.4 trillion. After hearing the arguments for nearly three hours, the Bench said the government should come out with its version on January 27.