Alka Verma –
Published On: October 06, 2021 at 10:30 IST
The Centre officially stated that a ‘Multi-Agency Group’ will be investigating the revelations of the Pandora Papers.
Adding to it, the Centre stated that the committee will be led by the Chairperson of the Central Board of Direct Taxes and it will control the investigation of the list of people who are accused of hiding their assets from the Government using global tax-havens.
Also, the Centre announced that the committee will be composed of members from the Central Board of Direct Taxes, the Enforcement Directorate, the Reserve Bank of India and the Financial Intelligence Unit of India.
The committee is going to investigate revelations of Pandora Papers which is based on around 1.19 crore confidential documents, coming from 14 offshore service firms.
The Indian Government regarding the matter stated that it had already taken note of the revelation which has been done by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.
The Ministry of Finance stated that “Names of only a few Indians (legal entities as well as individuals) have appeared so far in the media. Even the ICIJ [International Consortium of Investigative Journalists] website has not yet released the names and other particulars of all the entities.”
The Government also stated that the committee will be starting the investigations very soon and offenders will be punished.
“With a view to ensure effective investigation in these cases, the government will also proactively engage with foreign jurisdictions for obtaining information in respect of relevant taxpayers/entities,” stated the Government.
It should be noted here that all those 14 companies are accused of setting up shell companies for their clients seeking to keep their financial activities discreet.
These shell companies were formed in countries like Dubai, Monaco, Panama and Switzerland.
The documents related to this were leaked to the Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and it shared the access of leaked data with some of its media partners such as The Guardian, BBC Panorama and The Washington Post and made it a massive global investigation.
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