New Delhi: With a fresh list of black money holders abroad made waves, Government on Monday said it will probe all the new cases and disclosed it is in touch with a whistle blower to get the names of all the undisclosed Indian accounts in HSBC’s Switzerland branch and other destinations.
“Some new names have been revealed whose veracity would be checked by authorities,” Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said as government stated that information in more than 600 cases has been sought from foreign jurisdictions based credible information of undisclosed foreign accounts.
Jaitley and government were reacting to a report published in a leading daily, which said 1,195 Indian names in the fresh HSBC list are nearly double the 628 names that figured in an earlier list, that was shared by the French government with India in 2011.
The Supreme Court-appointed Special Investigation Team (SIT) on Monday discussed the fresh list and felt that there could be 100 new names in it.
“We will consider all new cases where there is evidence of black money… We will complete probe in all cases which are getting time barred by March 31,” SIT vice-chairman Arijit Pasayat said.
The ED and CBDT have been asked to gather information on the new list and inform SIT at the earliest, Pasayat said adding, “With Monday’s development the scope of the probe has widened.â€
Meanwhile some of the big industrialists and others figuring in the list, including Ambani brothers Mukesh and Anil, NRI businessman Naresh Goyal and politician Narayan Rane denied holding any illegal bank accounts abroad.
An official statement issued after Jaitley’s interaction with the media, said off the 628 Indian appearing in the first HSBC list, 200 were either non-residents or non-traceable, leaving 428 cases of residents which were found actionable.
The net amount of peak balance for these 428 cases was about Rs 4,500 crore.