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Narendra Modi govt refuses to share black money info with Ram Jethmalani

The government says it would not share details of the Indians who have accounts in HSBC bank, Geneva, with petitioner Ram Jethmalani.

Black money

The Centre on Monday refused to make public communications and information received from France regarding the black money parked by Indians in foreign bank accounts.

In its affidavit filed in the Supreme Court, the government said it would not share the details of 627 Indians who have accounts in HSBC bank, Geneva, with petitioner and senior advocate Ram Jethmalani.

The affidavit has pointed out that the court itself refrained from making public such information when the government had placed before it the details of 627 Indian account holders, being probed in the black money cases. On October 29, documents containing correspondence with French authorities, names of the account holders and status reports of the probe conducted so far in black money cases were submitted in sealed covers by Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi.

The government said the court had then sent all the documents to the Special Investigation Team (SIT), as per its previous order. Such documents were subsequently duly submitted before the SIT, it said.

In view of the past events, the Centre said there was no ground to now entertain Jethmalani’s application, which has sought information received from the French authorities regarding the Indian account holders.

The affidavit further stated that the government has already shared with Jethmalani all the information that was permissible under the existing regulations and that no further information supplied by France or the letters exchanged between the public authorities of India and France could be made public. It pleaded the court to dismiss the application.

A bench led by Chief Justice H L Dattu will hear the case on Tuesday. After it was censured for holding a “protective umbrella” for those being probed in black money cases, the government had placed the complete list of 627 Indian account holders’ names in HSBC bank, Geneva, and said almost half of these were being probed.

Referring the documents to the SIT, the bench had said it would not want to embarrass anybody at this juncture and would rather let the Special Investigation Team, constituted by the court in 2011, to monitor the probe and its progress.

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First published on: 20-01-2015 at 08:56 IST
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