IANS/New Delhi

 

The government will not withhold any information on black money or the names of account holders in tax havens, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said yesterday.

He said the details will be revealed after “following due procedure.”

“I am a little surprised by some of the headlines in today’s newspapers which state that the NDA (National Democratic Alliance) government has done a U-turn on the issue of black money stacked up in Swiss bank accounts. Nothing can be farther from the truth,” Jaitley said in an article published on his Facebook page.

“Let me begin by saying that the NDA government will not withhold any information, including names of account holders who have stashed black money abroad, from the public,” he said.

The minister however said a procedure has to be followed.

“...but the names will be revealed after following the due process of completing investigations and reaching conclusions about the quantum of unaccounted money... After doing so, all the information including the names of account holders will become public when quoted in court proceedings arising from complaints to be filed by the Income Tax Department against tax offenders,” he said.

Jaitley also said that any “premature and out of court disclosure” of the names of account holders would not only “vitiate the investigations but will enable such account holders to get away with their offences.”

“It will also violate India’s Double Taxation Avoidance Agreements (DTAA) with other countries and will choke receipt of all further information from those countries,” he said.

He also accused the previous Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government of not setting up a special investigative team (SIT) on the issue as ordered by the Supreme Court.

Jaitley said at the first very cabinet meeting, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “cabinet decided to appoint the SIT. The SIT has been effectively functioning since then.” The minister also said the Supreme Court had also asked the government to give the names that had been given by Germany to India, adding these names were given to the petitioner who made them public.

“The Germans strongly objected to this as a violation of the DTAA, which was entered into between the governments of India and Germany on June 19, 1995. The present NDA government has unfortunately inherited the legacy of that DTAA,” he said.

“If we scrap the treaty, we get no further information. The covenant to the treaty is that the names of the account holders and information received there under will only be disclosed when charges are filed in court,” he said.

“They obviously cannot be utilised for political propaganda or for political mileage.”

Jaitley said the government was committed to detecting the names, prosecuting the guilty and making them public, but it could not be pushed into adventurism and violate the treaties.

“Such an approach may actually help the account holders. Adventurism will be short-sighted. A mature approach will take us to the root of the matter.”

The central government on Friday told the Supreme Court that it cannot disclose names, received from foreign governments, of people who have allegedly stashed away their ill-gotten money in tax havens abroad, due to the DTAA. The government made its stand in an application before the Supreme Court seeking modification of an earlier court order asking it to disclose the all names it had received from the German government to petitioner Ram Jethmalani.

In the run-up to the Lok Sabha polls, the Bharatiya Janata Party had promised to bring back black money kept by Indians in overseas banks and repeatedly slammed the UPA for not doing anything to bring back the black money.

Meanwhile, West Bengal’s ruling Trinamool Congress hit out at the central government for what it said was its U-turn on the issue.

“The BJP government’s U-turn on black money is shocking. This is a betrayal of anti-UPA corruption sentiment. This shows the BJP and the Congress are part of the same cosy Delhi nexus,” Trinamool Rajya Sabha member Derek O’Brien said.

“Legalistic arguments about black money by government are a cop-out. What concrete steps has the BJP taken? Setting up a toothless committee is not enough.

“Let me assure you the Trinamool will oppose this U-turn on the black money issue by the BJP. We will do all it takes,” O’Brien said.