Amidst the raging debate on black money and some names floating around, a fresh petition filed in the Supreme Court has brought its attention to the action of several European countries proceeding against their citizens on the basis of the details provided by two bank officials and unearthing huge deposits with a Swiss bank.
This has been stated in a petition by former Mumbai region chief income commissioner K.M. Pai, questioning the government stand that the information could only be obtained through the double taxation avoidance agreement.
As the government faced repeated queries from the top court why the government was so “hesitant” in revealing the information available with it, including some names, solicitor-general Gopal Subramaniam has promised a bench of Justices B. Sudershan Reddy and S.S. Nijjar also to deal with the facts raised by Mr Pai.
Mr Pai’s counsel Krishnan Venugopal has in the petition cited several articles of some noted finance experts, including Professor Vaidyanathan of IIM-Bangalore to show how Germany, France, UK, Italy, Spain and the US relied upon the information provided by Franco-Italian computer engineer Herve Falciani with HSBC Holding PCL, one of the leading Swiss banks and his colleague Georgina Mikhael.
Mr Falciani, 38, had stored a huge data in his personal computers about thousands of foreigners’ secret accounts with HSBC. The bank had registered a case against him, but on getting bail, he managed to flee to France with Ms Mikhael, a Franco-Lebanese computer expert with HSBC.
As per the petition it came to light during the legal proceedings against Mr Falciani that he had details about 79,000 secret accounts of individuals and 20,000 companies with HSBC.
With his help French tax authorities got details about 8,000 accounts of its nationals and Italy came to know about 7,000 “black accounts”. Based on the information, Italy came out with a tax amnesty scheme allowing its citizens to convert their black money into white by paying a low penalty.