Chandigarh:- Centre today said it is pursuing cases against people having black money stashed abroad “quite vigorously” and has lot of data about Indians having foreign bank accounts in violation of country’s laws.
However, it said the names of those people “having black money stashed abroad” could not be revealed because of privacy laws.
“We are proceeding very vigorously. We have already got a lot of data from two different sources about Indian residents that have foreign bank accounts– one is HSBC and the second is ICIJ.
“From both sources we got names of many Indians who have violated our laws. We are pursuing all those cases quite vigorously,” Union Minister of state for Finance Jayant Sinha said here today while addressing media.
Asked whether the government will be disclosing the names of people having black money stashed abroad, Sinha said that privacy laws did not allow the government to make those names public.
“As per privacy and confidentiality laws, we cannot reveal the names of individuals as that is against the law of land. So we are not revealing those names. But you be rest assured that vigorous action is being undertaken,” he asserted.
“We are a responsible party and we never said that we are going to do something which is against the law. The law is very clear (that) you cannot reveal the names. Unless something else comes out in public domain or so on, we cannot talk about it and we will not talk about it,” he further said.
Asserting that Modi led government has fulfilled all its commitments on black money in the past one year, Sinha said it was the NDA led government which moved the Black Money Bill and made it a criminal offence.
He further said that some people now complained that the Government was doing too much with regard to black money.
“We have fulfilled our all commitments on black money. A lot of people are now saying you are pursuing black money laws too vigorously. On one hand people are saying you are not doing enough and on other hand people say you are doing too much,” he said.
Earlier, speaking at CII, the minister of state for Finance said there will not be any undue harassment to people because of Black Money Bill.
“We are setting up only two centralised cells in Mumbai and Delhi. When we get credible information about somebody having undisclosed income or assets outside India we have officers who will carefully monitor and supervise only in Mumbai and Delhi,” he said.
PTI
