Once more, with disinterest?

The impact of the Panama Papers was the least in India. Unlike countries such as Pakistan, China, Iceland or even Russia whose top leaders were found to have stashed their ill-gotten wealth in dubious shell accounts in different parts of the world, the papers leaked the law firm, Mossack Fonseca, tell a different story in our country.

It is difficult to believe, though, that out of 11.5 million pages and 500 accounts that refer to Indians, there is nothing that implicates anyone who has fed the anti-corruption movement of the last few years. There are many with the credentials to be in this list, and there is no media insight from these worthies about being happy after escaping the Panama curse.

There’s no mention of people such as like former telecom minister A Raja, politician Suresh Kalmadi or their benamis, and many of those accused in the 2G or coal scams. The big names that figure are those of Amitabh Bachchan and his daughter-in-law, Aishwarya Rai, who have tied themselves in knots in trying to deny their association to the shell companies.

Did the Indian tax avoiders and black money gang find some other law firms, or did they manage to conceal their identities through benamis or fake names? There is no new insight into who could be behind many of these shell companies, except that the number of wealthy people having such exposure has increased substantially.

During the late 80s and early 90s, Indians got education in benami foreign accounts and companies during the probe into the alleged kickbacks in the 155-mm Bofors gun deal. The national appetite to find out who the ultimate beneficiaries were behind secret bank accounts with names such as Lotus, Mont Blanc and AE Services, was politically stoked by criminal investigation.

The grand plan then was to link Rajiv Gandhi and his relatives to these accounts. For many it was easy to link the former Prime Minister with the account called Lotus as it translates in Hindi as ‘Rajiv’. Such a creative explanation was used to crack open the identity of the Mont Blanc account-holder too! Pictures of Rajiv were shown using the Mont Blanc brand to provide conclusive evidence of his ownership of the bank account.

High profile shell company owners from other countries have also concealed their riches under funny names. Comedy Central talk show host, John Oliver, in his entertaining and riveting programme stated amongst his usual guffaws that the accounts of some of the top leaders were based on the titles of James Bond films such as Goldfinger , Octopussy and so on.

Oliver savaged the Russian president, Vladimir Putin’s benami, Sergei Roldugin, who had $2 billion in his account ostensibly given by his benefactors for promoting music. Roldugin is Putin’s trusted friend and a famous cellist.

British prime minister, David Cameron, too, was found short on putting together a credible explanation for his father’s funds in a shell company and whether he was a beneficiary or not. His involvement brought to the fore the conflict of interest of his government in taking tough action against dependent territories such as Cayman Islands and the British Virgin Islands that are also tax havens accused of washing dirty money. This exposé has caused great embarrassment to the British government which, ironically, is hosting an anti-corruption summit later in May.

All the European countries want British help in shutting down these territories or at least create a register where the ultimate ownership of the account-holder is revealed. If the government is compelled to close these tax havens then it will bring about a major change in the international order as the funds originating from drug trade, commissions from defence deals, leakage from social projects, war loot and corruption will not find an easy parking place. Nor will dubious startups get seed funding or venture capital.

Many British financial institutions such as the HSBC have been accused of using dependencies to launder much of the drug-related funds in their system. A probe in 2013 revealed some 500 subsidiaries located in different geographies that were receiving funny money, which was promptly washed by moving from one account or haven to another. A US assistant attorney general, Lanny Breur, is quoted as saying that $881 million was laundered through HSBC bank accounts between 2006 and 2010 by a Mexican drug cartel.

The investigation also showed the bank’s linkages with Salafi and other jihadi networks. HSBC was fined close to $2 billion for allowing money-launderers use its services. Now it is fighting hard that the first monitor report of the bank’s laundering ways not be revealed. It fears that its past, as a beneficiary of the opium wars against China, would come to the fore to hurt its credibility.

While the battle against tax havens has intensified after the release of the Panama Papers, there is little doubt that much of this resolve cannot translate into meaningful action in the absence of political will and integrity in investigation. In 2009, I travelled to Geneva to follow up on the Hasan Ali Khan case: he was accused of having $8 billion in the Swiss Bank, UBS. He had allegedly stashed these funds with the help of a Kolkata-based businessman, Kashi Nath Tapuria. It was apparent that these two were benamis of someone wealthier and more powerful.

When the Swiss authorities were approached for more information in this case, Falco Gelli of the Swiss department of justice told this writer that the Indian authorities had submitted “forged” documents; hence the transfer of funds to a Swiss account had no reality.

Although the case is seeing some kind of revival in the last few months, it is clear that some officials engaged in the investigation earlier had tried their level best to scuttle it by couriering dodgy papers to Switzerland. A similar criminal attitude is visible in the way government agencies have gone about dealing with the exposé of HSBC papers, in which the names of big industrial houses were revealed.

After the cavalier manner in which the earlier probes of leaks have been conducted, there is cynicism whether the Government’s promise to identify the ultimate beneficiaries of the Indians who figure in the Panama list will yield any result. If it manages to provide quality investigation in this case, the Modi government would be able to convince the masses that it is serious about bringing black money — which is 30 per cent of our total annual GDP — back to India.

The writer is the editor of Hardnews magazine and author of ‘Bad Money Bad Politics — The Untold Story of the Hawala Scandal’

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