Monday, 25 April 2011

http://www.inewsone.com/2011/04/25/high-level-committee-to-trail-money-laundering-2/45933

New Delhi, April 25 (IANS) The government Monday told the Supreme Court that it has set up a multi-disciplinary committee, comprising top officials of different departments, to oversee and coordinate investigations into cases of money laundering and stashing black money in tax havens abroad.

An apex court bench of Justice B. Sudershan Reddy and Justice S.S. Nijjar was told that a committee headed by secretary of the department of revenue will have the deputy governor of the Reserve Bank of India, the director of Intelligence Bureau, the director of the Central Bureau of Investigation, the head of the Directorate of Enforcement, the chairman of the Central Board of Direct Taxes and the director general of the Narcotics Control Bureau as its members.

The court was told that beyond the Hasan Ali Khan and LTG bank case, the committee was a permanent standing arrangement to trail money laundering and supervise related cases.

The court was told that committee head will report to the apex court on the investigations carried out by different departments.

Solicitor General Gopal Subramanium told the court that there would be no hiccups in the working of the committee overseeing the investigations into the money laundering cases.

The court was also told that the committee would track ‘the illicit generation of funds within the country and their outflow for their illegal parking in foreign jurisdictions by Indian citizens’.

Appearing for petitioner Ram Jethmalani, senior counsel Anil Divan told the court that the oversight committee was nothing but an old wine in a new bottle.

Divan said that in pursuance of the N.N. Vohra Committee report on politician-bureaucrat-underworld connection in the wake of the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts and the verdict of the apex court in Jain Hawala matter, a similar nodal body was set up which was in existence even now but did nothing.

He asked what did that nodal agency do over the alleged money laundering by Khan and deposits by Indians in LGT Bank in Lichtenstein, a European country.

Divan mocked at the central government’s contention that it was bound by the secrecy clause of the Double Tax Avoidance Agreement (DTAA) with Germany and could not disclose the names of the people disclosed by the German authorities holding accounts in LGT bank.

He no provisions of the DTAA could superceed the petitioner’s statutory right to know.

The hearing would continue Thursday.