22.4.09

SC moved for black money return

The heated political debate over recovery of money siphoned out of India and allegedly stashed in foreign banks reached the Supreme Court on Tuesday with eminent lawyer and former law minister Ram Jethmalani, along with prominent personalities, filing a PIL seeking urgent remedial measures to bring back the black money estimated at Rs 70 lakh crore. Jethmalani, joined by five others including K P S Gill and Subhash Kashyap, through senior advocate Anil Devan told a bench comprising Chief Justice K G Balakrishnan and Justices P Sathasivam and J M Panchal that both US and Germany have already initiated steps to recover the black money in foreign banks and India should follow suit without any loss of time. The PIL, being not part of Tuesday’s list of business before the Supreme Court, was mentioned but the bench said it needed to go through it. It then posted it for preliminary hearing on Wednesday. Referring to a recent article in a magazine, the petitioners said it was estimated that between the years 2002 and 2006, ‘‘nearly Rs 70 lakh crore, have been siphoned off from this country and stashed away in foreign banks’’. ‘‘Finance minister P Chidambaram has publicly acknowledged that he is in the know of all these facts and as far as petitioners know, the only action so far is a communication alleged to have been made by the minister to the leader of opposition. The LoP has not confirmed this claim so far. “In any event such communication does not excuse total apathy in the matter of seizing these funds and prosecuting and punishing the guilty persons,’’ the PIL stated. Seeking a directive from the SC to the Centre, Reserve Bank of India (RBI), Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi), Enforcement Directorate and Central Board of Direct Taxes to get back, what they referred to as, ‘‘stolen property’’, the petitioners said the colossal failure to take action on this issue was due to the fact that ‘‘influential politicians in most of the political parties are involved in the offences in question’’. Alleging that huge funds from India handled by operatives of Swiss Bank — UBS — had been detected by ED, the petitioners said, ‘‘It is shocking to know that in spite of the nefarious activities in helping Indian citizens to hide their assets and committing tax fraud, the RBI has been liberal in granting the retail licence by giving them (the bank) a clean chit.’’

1 comment:

Unknown said...

PIL to bring back Black money in Swiss & other banks have already been filed by an NGO - Indian Social Security on 06th April 2009, It also demanded international Land / Assets Mapping of Indian owners to control Large scale corruption in Indian System