Big B rejects link to foreign firms listed in Panama Papers

Mumbai : Veteran actor Amitab Bachchan on Tuesday rejected suggestions of him having any links with offshore companies listed in the "infamous" Panama Papers.

In a statement, Bachchan said,

"I do not know any of the companies referred to by Indian Express - Sea Bulk Shipping Company Ltd, Lady Shipping Ltd, Treasure Shipping Ltd, and Tramp Shipping Ltd. I have never been a director of any of the above stated companies. It is possible that my name has been misused. I have paid all my taxes including on monies spent by me overseas. Monies that I have remitted overseas have been in compliance with law, including remittances through LRS, after paying Indian taxes. In any event the news report in Indian Express does not even suggest any illegality on my part."

Thank you

The Panama Papers are a leaked set of 11.5 million confidential documents created by the Panamanian corporate service provider Mossack Fonseca that provide detailed information on more than 214,000 offshore companies, including the identities of shareholders and directors.

The documents identify (as directors and shareholders of such companies) current government leaders from five countries - Argentina, Iceland, Saudi Arabia, Ukraine and the United Arab Emirates - as well as government officials, close relatives and close associates of various heads of government of more than 40 other countries, including Brazil, China, Peru, France, India, Malaysia, Mexico, Pakistan, Russia, South Africa, Spain, Syria and the United Kingdom.

Comprising documents created since the 1970s that amount to 2.6 terabytes of data, the papers were supplied to the Süddeutsche Zeitung in August 2015 by an anonymous source, and subsequently to the U.S.-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ).

The papers were distributed to and analyzed by about 400 journalists at 107 media organizations in more than 80 countries. The first news reports based on the set, along with 149 of the documents themselves, were published on April 3, 2016, and a full list of companies is to be released in early May 2016.

the Government said Monday it was constituting a special multi-agency group to look into all cases of Indians setting up offshore entities in tax havens after The Indian Express published the first set of names as part of its ongoing investigation in The Panama Papers.

The Finance Ministry, in a statement, said the group, comprising officers from the investigative unit of the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) and its Foreign Tax and Tax Research division, the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), will monitor the flow of information in each case.

According to the Indian Express, Bachchan, one of India's biggest movie stars, was appointed director of at least four offshore shipping companies in the British Virgin Islands and the Bahamas.

The Indian Express was one of the news outlets that obtained the trove of confidential documents dubbed the Panama Papers.

The companies, which were set up more than 20 years ago, were small, but they traded in ships worth millions of dollars, the newspaper said.