Mounting pressure on the government to set up a special investigating team to probe the stashing of black money abroad, the Supreme Court on Thursday rejected the Centre’s proposal to create an “in-house” body for better coordination among its different agencies, saying these agencies had been “sleeping” on the issue for more than two years.
“Till now every department and agency of the government is sleeping on the issue,” a bench of Justices B. Sudershan Reddy and S.S. Nijjar said while rejecting the proposal of solicitor-general Gopal Subramaniam that a body for better coordination among all the investigating agencies of the government be created.
The bench, monitoring the Enforcement Directorate investigation of black money and Hasan Ali gave the government till Monday to make its stand clear on the SIT.
The bench told Mr Subramaniam the case had hardly progressed since 2009 and it was only revolving around one individual — Hasan Ali — and that there was also no concrete progress on the 26 names received from the German authorities.
The SG said the government would have no objection to “segregating” the investigation by handing over the Hasan Ali passport forgery case to the CBI and the RBI taking up the matter of secret accounts with UBS and other Swiss banks and also involving other agencies to function under a central body.
“Instead of segregating the matter, like the UBS issue to be looked by RBI and passport case by the CBI, it will create more operational difficulties. Special investigating team can do it in a rather coordinated manner... then why this segregation, why not a coordinated probe,” the Supreme Court asked.
As the SG tried to bring in certain technicalities related to double-taxation avoidance treaties (DTATs) with different countries, the bench said, “We are putting it very simply: apart from one individual (Hasan Ali), have you found anything about the others since 2009? Is it your case that there are no other accounts in which money is parked abroad? What information has been gathered about unearthing black money?”
When the SG started to draw a distinction between “suspected and unsuspected” foreign bank accounts of Indians to focus the direction of the probe, the apex court demanded to know whether any further names had been revealed by the persons already under investigation.
“What is the source of their huge deposits in foreign banks? You might have got some names and information by now.”
But these things had not been reflecting the ED’s status reports. “Do you have any other information which you have not placed before us,” Justice Reddy, heading the bench, specifically asked the SG, who said that under DTATs “secrecy” of information has to be maintained.
Brushing aside the technical questions, the court said, “This is a matter which requires the involvement of the entire Union government. It is your agency (ED) which has written to the home ministry, RAW, I-T and the police department. It is a very complex issue and requires a coordinated investigation under the supervision of an eminent person — be it a HC or SC judge or any other person — who would coordinate among the different probe agencies and report directly to this court.”