Centre’s stand on black money mirrors UPA’s: Chidambaram

October 25, 2014 04:28 am | Updated November 16, 2021 08:09 pm IST - New Delhi

File photo.

File photo.

Former Finance Minister and Congress leader P. Chidambaram has said that on the issue of revealing the names of black money hoarders, the Modi government’s submission to the Supreme Court was the same as the UPA’s stand.

On October 17, the Centre had submitted to the Supreme Court its inability to disclose the names of Indians who had illicit accounts in foreign banks, sparking allegations that the Modi government had made a U-turn on its election campaign promise.

The government had cited provisions of the Double Taxation Avoidance Agreement that India had with countries where these accounts were held as the reason for the non-disclosure.

Mr. Chidambaram told The Hindu that there was “no difference” between this submission and the stand the UPA government had taken.

Defending the Centre’s stand, Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had said last week that the names would be revealed after following the due process of completing investigations and reaching conclusions about the quantum of unaccounted money.

The names of the account holders would become public when they were quoted in court proceedings, arising from complaints to be filed by the Income Tax Department against tax offenders, Mr. Jaitley wrote in a Facebook post last week.

India received information about account-holders with LGT Bank (Liechtenstein) from the German tax authorities in March 2009.

Two years later, it received the names of 782 people who had accounts with the Geneva branch of HSBC bank, leaked by a former bank employee named Hervé Falciani.

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