The Indian government on Monday declared that action would be taken against “unlawful” accounts held abroad by Indians and constituted a multi-agency group to continuously monitor information in the wake of the exposé that named 500 people, including film actors and industrialists, who have allegedly stashed money in offshore entities, Press Trust of India said.
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said Prime Minister Narendra Modi had discussed the issue with him in the morning, and on his advice, a group had been set up, which included officials from the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT), Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and FIU (Financial Intelligence Unit).
“The multi-agency group will comprise various government agencies — the CBDT, FIU, FT&TR (Foreign Tax and Tax Research) and RBI. They will continuously monitor these [accounts] and whichever accounts are found to be unlawful, strict action as per existing laws will be taken,” he told reporters.
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Jaitley’s comments came on a day the Indian Express carried a report based on leaked documents of a Panama law firm Mossack Fonseca, which is said to feature links of over 500 Indians to offshore firms.
“I welcome this investigation. I think it is a healthy step that these kinds of exposes are being made. I have been repeatedly saying that the world is now going to increasingly become more transparent, countries are cooperating with each other and slowly all this information is going to come out as a result of various global initiatives which have been launched,” he said.
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