INDIA'S government revealed on Monday (October 27) the names of three businessmen accused of illegally stashing funds in foreign bank accounts as it seeks to recover billions of untaxed dollars parked abroad.
The Bharatiya Janata Party, which took power in May, had accused the previous Congress government of failing to get tough on the issue that has become a political lightning rod.
The government filed an affidavit in the Supreme Court on Monday naming three people, including Pradip Burman, a former director of the Dabur food group, for allegedly hiding money abroad.
The government has been under pressure to identify offenders following petitions from activists including prominent lawyer Subramanian Swamy, who has waged an aggressive campaign to prosecute wealthy people with undeclared funds offshore.
The government said in its affidavit it was “committed to disclose the names of persons holding illegal money… following due process of law”.
BJP spokesman Sambit Patra called disclosure of the names an “historic day”.
“Names are gradually being declared. Today is the beginning of the end for those who illegally stashed money abroad,” Patra told reporters.
But opposition Congress general secretary Digvijaya Singh accused the BJP of “selective revelation” of names and said the drip-feed process smacked of “blackmail, not black money”.
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley last week said Congress could face “some embarrassment” when names of people holding illicit foreign accounts was made public.
Lawyer Swamy said he did not understand why the government had not disclosed the identities of all alleged offenders.
“I do not see any legal issues in releasing all 700 names,” he told CNN-IBN television network.
In 2011 French authorities informed India of around 700 Indians with Swiss accounts.
The information came from a data leak by a bank employee. Other funds are believed stashed in tax havens such as Lichtenstein.
Soon after taking office, Prime Minister Narendra Modi set up a team of regulators and ex-judges to repatriate illicit funds.
The three names had been revealed because “prosecution has been launched under the income tax law”, the government said.
Global Financial Integrity, a Washington-based group that tracks money transfers, said Indians surreptitiously shifted $344bn overseas between 2002 and 2011, depriving India of vital tax revenues.
But that money abroad is a fraction of illicit funds concealed in India, experts say.
The Dabur group said in a statement that Burman opened his “legally allowed” foreign account while he was a non-resident Indian.
Another person named in Monday's affidavit, Pankaj Chimanlal Lodhiya, chairman of western Indian jewellery-and-real estate firm Shreeji Trading, told reporters he had complied with tax laws and had no foreign account.
The third person named, Goan mine operator Radha Timbola, said in televised remarks that “we want to see the affidavit” before commenting.
Prashant Bhushan, another prominent legal activist, said he was “disappointed at the (disclosure of) relatively innocuous names rather than the more influential and powerful names”.
