Slamming the Centre for holding a protective umbrella over persons stashing black money in bank accounts abroad, the Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered the government to disclose all their names in a sealed cover by Wednesday. A three-judge Bench of Chief Justice H.L. Dattu and Justices Ranjana Desai and Madan B. Lokur rejected the argument of Attorney-General Mukul Rohatgi for a modification of the order directing disclosure of all the names.
“Don’t tell us to modify our order. We will not modify or change even a word in our order. You give us all information you received from foreign countries and we will decide the course of the probe. Why are you providing a protective umbrella to foreign bank account holders? You do not have to take interest in people having foreign bank accounts. The SIT will take care of it,” the Chief Justice told Mr. Rohatgi.
“We will decide whether to order a CBI or an Income Tax probe or entrust the probe to some other agency. We can’t leave the issue of bringing back black money to the government.” Finance Minister Arun Jaitley told presspersons here on Tuesday that the government had no difficulty in placing before the Supreme Court the list of black money account holders.
