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Black Money: SC’s green signal to Doval’s plan
National Security Advisor Ajit Doval has a prescription for getting black money back to the country and it is being taken rather seriously by the highest court in the land.
New Delhi: National Security Advisor Ajit Doval has a prescription for getting black money back to the country and it is being taken rather seriously by the highest court in the land.
Till now, the authorities have had little success in recovering the Rs 70,000 crore estimated to be stashed away in foreign tax havens.
Taking note of Modi government’s sluggish efforts to bring back black money, the Supreme Court on Tuesday decided to force the Centre’s hand by asking the Special Investigation Team “to consider” registration of “omnibus” criminal cases to expedite prosecutions and permit authorities to seek help from the police in foreign countries.
Every election candidate may also be asked to file an affidavit while filing nomination that he does not hold illegal money abroad.
These were part of recommendations in an article authored in 2011 by Ajit Doval – “India’s Plundered Money Abroad- Can we get it back ?” — which was submitted to the court by lawyer Ram Jethmalani, the petitioner in the public interest litigation seeking to bring back illegal money.
But in a major U-turn after repeatedly rapping the Modi government during earlier hearings for not revealing names of black money holders, a bench headed by Chief Justice H L Dattu said it was more interested in bringing back the money and not in the disclosure of names.
When Divan and activist advocate Prashant Bhushan urged the court to direct the Centre to disclose names of 250 people who admitted to holding accounts in foreign banks but were let off after tax proceedings, Chief Justice Dattu said: “We are interested in money coming back and not on disclosure of names”.
The comments are a huge relief for the Modi government as Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi had told the bench earlier that disclosing names of all Indian foreign bank account holders without arriving at their alleged illegality would breach confidentiality clause in existing bilateral double taxation avoidance agreements signed by India with other countries and it would impede efforts to get further information on Indians having illegal accounts abroad.
