Black money: After rap, Govt to come clean to court today

The Supreme Court on Tuesday slammed the Centre for protecting persons having black money abroad. It ordered the Centre to disclose all the names of such account holders in a sealed cover by Wednesday.

A three-judge Bench comprising Chief Justice of India HL Dattu and Justices Ranjana Desai and Madan B Lokur rejected the argument of Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi for modification of the order directing disclosure of all names.

The CJI told the Attorney General: “Don’t tell us to modify our order. We will not modify or change even a word in our order. Give us all information you received from foreign countries and we will decide the course of the probe. Why are you providing a protective umbrella to foreign bank account holders? You do not have to take interest in people having foreign bank accounts. The SIT will take care of it. You need not take the trouble of conducting any investigation. We will decide whether to order a CBI or an Income Tax probe or entrust the probe to some other agency. We can’t leave the issue of bringing back black money to the government. It will never happen during our time. We will do it.”

Making it clear that a new regime at the Centre could not ask for modification of the order after five months when it was passed in an open court and accepted by the Centre, the CJI said: “We share the concern of the petitioner, senior advocate Ram Jethmalani, who is only an informer. He only wants to bring back black money stashed abroad. You do not do anything. Just pass on the information of account holders you have received from Germany, France and Switzerland to us and we will pass an order for a further probe.”

The court’s direction came a day after the NDA Government released eight names against whom it had started prosecution for allegedly stashing black money in foreign banks. Following this, the Supreme Court also questioned the Centre as to why it was providing a protective umbrella to foreign bank account holders.

At the outset the AG told the court: “We (the Centre) are not interested in hiding any information from the court. This Government constituted the SIT at the first instance and had already passed on the names we have received from foreign banks. Unless we give a declaration of confidentiality we can’t sign the agreement in December. What we are saying is we will disclose those names against whom investigation is completed and prosecution is launched.”

The CJI said: “You are now trying to reargue the case, which is impermissible. You first give us all the names in a sealed cover by tomorrow and we will tell you what you should do.”

The Bench posted the matter for further hearing on Wednesday.

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