Center submits to
the Supreme Court list of 627 persons having illegal accounts in foreign banks
The Centre today gave
to the Supreme Court a list of 627 Indians who have accounts in HSBC bank,
Geneva. The documents containing correspondence with French authorities, names
of the account holders and the status
report of the probe conducted so far in black money cases have been submitted
in separate sealed covers by the Attorney General. However, the Apex Court did not open the
sealed covers. It said that
the envelopes will be sent to the Special Investigation Team, SIT and
will be opened by Chairman M. B. Shah and Vice Chairman Arijit Pasayat, both
former judges of the Supreme Court. They
will decide on the future course of action.
It asked the SIT to conduct probe against the account holders and submit
its status report of its probe as expeditiously as possible by the end of
November.
The Centre has
submitted that almost half of the account holders are resident Indians, who can
be prosecuted under the Income Tax laws and rest of them are Non-Resident
Indians. Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi said that some of the account holders
have already admitted to having accounts and have paid taxes. Most transactions
in these accounts took place during 1999 and 2000 and the last date for
completion and assessment in all these cases is March 31, 2015.
The apex court
yesterday directed the Centre to submit all the names of Indian account holders
in foreign banks . The court has been monitoring the investigations into black
money since 2009. In 2011, the court had asked for complete disclosure of
information on Indians holding black money abroad.