Let SC examine the papers, says Congress

SC already probing foreign bank accounts; multi-departmental committee will never yield results

The Congress on Monday criticised the BJP-led NDA government’s decision to form a “multi-departmental committee” for examining the “Panama Papers” expose, and demanded instead that the matter should be moved to the Supreme Court that was examining 1,600 foreign bank accounts of Indian, suspecting them to be repositories of black money.

“Congress rejects in toto the shoddy attempt by the Modi Government and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley to brush aside the matter by constituting a Multi-Departmental Committee, the probe of which will never fructify,” said the chief spokesperson of Congress, Randeep Singh Surjewala.

Mr.Surjewala accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of having “friendly” links with those industrialists who, according to the Panama Papers investigation, have deployed proxies to stash away wealth in tax havens. Mr Surjewala demanded that the 500 names that have surfaced in the expose should be referred to the division bench of Supreme Court.

In May 2014, the BJP government, following the orders of Supreme Court, set up a Special Investigation Team to probe 1,600 bank accounts that were suspected of being credited with black money. In that light, Mr.Surjewala questioned why the government was “shying away” from handing over the Panama Paper leaks to the same SIT. “It seems the government is trying to hide something,” he said.