Panama probe takes Income Tax department to dozen nations

Officials said a special wing under the Central Board of Direct Taxes has made multiple requests to their counterparts in foreign nations as part of the I-T department’s tax evasion probe against those named in these leaks. They said that the taxman, in numerous cases in this list, was faced with non-cooperation and non-acceptance of their accounts as revealed in the Panama Papers and hence the department had to approach the foreign jurisdictions including Switzerland, British Virgin Island and the UK among others.

“The I-T department has approached close to a dozen overseas jurisdictions in order to obtain actionable evidence and legal material to act against those who has been reported to have stashed black money abroad as per the Panama Papers disclosures.”

“In many cases, the department has reported, that those named in the list are refusing to be the beneficial owners despite the taxman getting some evidence that they actually are the ones who were involved in creating these assets,” a senior official said. 

SIT Chairman Justice (retd) MB Shah, in a recent interview to PTI, had said investigating agencies are facing ‘difficulties’ in reaching to the bottom of the matter as they are not getting specific account numbers and people named in the list are also ‘not disclosing’ the details to the taxman.