The Government said on Friday that of the list of 628 Indians who could be holding black money overseas, 201 are either non-traceable or non-residents, while 289 have no balance left in their accounts. There are 427 actionable cases that collectively hold a sum of Rs 4,479 crore in bank accounts overseas, which the official release said had been calculated using an exchange rate of Rs 45 to a dollar. The release said 339 have balance in their accounts.
The Income Tax Department initiated action against 79 of the account holders. The disclosure is as per the direction of Special Investigation Team (SIT) which submitted a report to the Supreme Court on black money. India had received the list of 628 Indians who hold accounts in HSBC’s Geneva branch from the French government.
Earlier in the day, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said that proceedings in the cases on the HSBC list would be completed by March 31, 2015.
The I-T Department has finalised assessment for 79 entities and an amount of Rs. 2,926 crore has been brought to tax towards the undisclosed balances, according to the release. Penalty proceedings under the Income Tax Act, 1961 have been initiated in 46 cases and levied in 3 cases so far, it said. Prosecutions were initiated in 6 cases for wilful attempts to evade taxes besides show cause notices have been issued in 10 others.
The steps the SIT has recommended for controlling black include mandatory quoting of the Permanent Account Number for cash and cheque payments of more than Rs 1,00,000. It flagged mining, ponzi schemes, iron ore exports, misuse of export- import route as the major areas prone to black money transactions. It recommended that an institutional mechanism be set up to unearth black money by examining the mismatch between export and import data with the corresponding data of other countries on a quarterly basis. It also called for making tax evasion in excess of Rs. 50 lakh a ‘predicate offence’ and be brought under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act.
It recommended additional provisions in the FEMA (Foreign Exchange Management Act) for confiscation of property of equivalent value within the country in cases where it is found property is owned overseas illegally.
