Rs 6,400 cr deposited in 339 accounts by Indians in Swiss bank, SIT tells SC
NEW DELHI: The Special Investigation Team on black money informed the Supreme Court on Tuesday that 339 accounts in HSBC bank held by Indians had a net amount of Rs 6,400 crore on which the income tax department has raised a demand of Rs 4,520 crore.
“Amount of Rs 237 crore is recovered on tax and penalty demand raised. It does not include amount paid by way of self assessment tax in certain cases. Out of total 624 cases, 403 were actionable. Assessment in 373 cases has been completed. In 36 cases, concealment penalty of Rs 112 crore have been levied and such proceedings have been initiated in 180 more cases,” the SIT said in its report.
The SIT said it had gathered information about 605 cases of foreign accounts where illegal money was suspected to have been stashed. “As part of investigation, fresh references under Double Taxation Avoidance Convention (DTAC) were made by the Central Board of Direct Taxation (CBDT) to France in 605 cases, requesting additional information,” it said.
The SIT, headed by two retired Supreme Court judges M B Shah and Arijit Pasayat, said, “As a result of persistent follow up, further information has been received in 575 cases in the last week of February this year. Based upon new inputs (mostly existing cases), further investigation is in progress. It has been observed that some of the cases which were hitherto not actionable may become actionable as a result of such further investigation.”
Giving credence to information given by International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) on black money holders, the SIT said it had conducted investigations on the data provided by the forum and traced 534 Indians so far, of which 430 were resident Indians.
“Verification of income tax returns in these cases shows that in large number of cases, such offshore entities/transactions were not disclosed to I-T department. During the course of investigation, 176 persons have admitted their relationship with such offshore entities/transactions,” the SIT said.
On unaccounted income by Indians, the SIT said the CBDT had detected Rs 7,078 crore in 2013-14 and Rs 4,457 crore during 2014-15. During the two financial years, duty evasion of Rs 750 crore and Rs 21.59 crore was also detected.
The SIT informed the court that it discussed the Global Financial Integrity (GFI) report of December 14, 2014 which mentioned that illicit financial flows for India for 2012 was Rs 5,93,557 crore and the cumulative illicit financial flow for 10 years was to the tune of Rs 25,00,000 crore.
“Subsequently, director general, Department of Revenue Intelligence, on April 24 this year sent report on trade mismatch between India and China. His report established a pattern of under-valuation to avoid import duties in India and that differential between the actual value and declared value are being sent through informal channels. In the said report DG, DRI has also stated that trade mismatch between India and other countries will be submitted subsequently,” the SIT said.
