This is a huge initiative against corruption.. with world banking laws now favoring countries who want to trace the ill-gotten/tax evaded money in off shore accounts.. any country who requests disclosure of these accounts will not only get information.. but also can nab the the account holders.. get their accounts frozen.. and eventually can claim the money back. I hope this can be done by Pakistan also.. but we have very little hope as politicians/bureaucrats/army generals who have to take this initiative are themselves believed to be the biggest holders of these accounts.
News Desk
NEWS DELHI: Investigators say they have already mopped up a “massive amount” - running into “hundreds of crores” - as unpaid taxes from among the 700 numbered bank accounts held by Indians in HSBC Bank in Geneva in the ongoing scrutiny of what is considered a sprawling black money trail, reports the Indian Express on Sunday.
In fact, Rs 40 crore has been recovered from Delhi-based account holders and Rs 60 crore from just one account holder in Chennai alone. As reported first by The Indian Express (August 8, 2011), it was in July that the French authorities passed on details of these accounts to India. Of the total list, 70 account holders were based in Delhi and 18 of them were scrutinised while six account holders volunteered to pay their tax dues.
To date, the HSBC Delhi list has yielded unpaid taxes to the tune of Rs 40 crore with account holders understood to have been holding between Rs 7 crore and Rs 40 crore in their accounts. Said a key official: “It is only in two cases that investigation showed taxes had been paid as per norms. Over 95% of the deposits can be described as black money. The case, we hope, will be a deterrent for others who are holding huge deposits in banks abroad.’’
Significantly, officials said that while only unpaid taxes have been collected so far, once the entire exercise is over, penal action and a possible routing of the banking details to the Enforcement Directorate (ED) will follow.
The information on the numbered accounts posed a challenge since in a third of the 700 cases, complete data was not available. The information supplied is in the form of name of account holder; the beneficiary; the name of the person who opened the account; the passport number; the name of the banker; date of opening and closing the account and the balance (till year 2007, but not in all cases). There are no signatures of either the account holder or beneficiaries of the numbered accounts.
The I-T authorities, thus, decided to first search those account holders where all the details had come in from France. Communiques have also been sent to the HSBC Bank to furnish all transaction details for the 700 accounts but no response has been received as yet. Sources said the bank has alerted all its account holders that their confidentiality clause had been violated on account of data theft by an ex-employee.
News Desk
NEWS DELHI: Investigators say they have already mopped up a “massive amount” - running into “hundreds of crores” - as unpaid taxes from among the 700 numbered bank accounts held by Indians in HSBC Bank in Geneva in the ongoing scrutiny of what is considered a sprawling black money trail, reports the Indian Express on Sunday.
In fact, Rs 40 crore has been recovered from Delhi-based account holders and Rs 60 crore from just one account holder in Chennai alone. As reported first by The Indian Express (August 8, 2011), it was in July that the French authorities passed on details of these accounts to India. Of the total list, 70 account holders were based in Delhi and 18 of them were scrutinised while six account holders volunteered to pay their tax dues.
To date, the HSBC Delhi list has yielded unpaid taxes to the tune of Rs 40 crore with account holders understood to have been holding between Rs 7 crore and Rs 40 crore in their accounts. Said a key official: “It is only in two cases that investigation showed taxes had been paid as per norms. Over 95% of the deposits can be described as black money. The case, we hope, will be a deterrent for others who are holding huge deposits in banks abroad.’’
Significantly, officials said that while only unpaid taxes have been collected so far, once the entire exercise is over, penal action and a possible routing of the banking details to the Enforcement Directorate (ED) will follow.
The information on the numbered accounts posed a challenge since in a third of the 700 cases, complete data was not available. The information supplied is in the form of name of account holder; the beneficiary; the name of the person who opened the account; the passport number; the name of the banker; date of opening and closing the account and the balance (till year 2007, but not in all cases). There are no signatures of either the account holder or beneficiaries of the numbered accounts.
The I-T authorities, thus, decided to first search those account holders where all the details had come in from France. Communiques have also been sent to the HSBC Bank to furnish all transaction details for the 700 accounts but no response has been received as yet. Sources said the bank has alerted all its account holders that their confidentiality clause had been violated on account of data theft by an ex-employee.
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