Jethmalani Laments ‘Lack of Seriousness’ on Black Money
NEW DELHI:Senior lawyer and former BJP leader Ram Jethmalani on Tuesday told the Supreme Court that all the election promises made by the NDA regarding black money were “false” and that the government hadn’t made any serious effort to bring back the ill-gotten money stashed away in tax havens.
Jethmalani didn’t spare Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP president Amit Shah, quoting an interview of Shah wherein he had stated that Modi’s promise to bring back black money was a “political jumla (platitude)”.
“The presumption is that the two gentlemen, the party president and the Prime Minister, are in concurrence with each other,” he told a Bench headed by Chief Justice H L Dattu during a hearing on a petition filed by him and others on the issue.
“I am suspecting wrong [done] by both the sides [UPA and NDA governments] and the fraud has been perpetuated by both the sides,” he told the Bench. The former Union minister then attacked Arun Jaitley, saying “the innocent Finance Minister” has been quoted as saying that India had not identified any tax haven.
This claim was, he said, in contrast with what previous Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee had said while issuing a white paper stating that the country had identified 45 tax heavens abroad.
Jethmalani also targeted Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) Chairperson Anita Kapur, who became an ex-officio member of the Special investigation Team (SIT) set up to probe black money cases. He alleged that Kapur had handed over to foreign authorities 17 letters with the names of illegal account holders blacked out.
“Most of the 17 letters are signed by her. The tragedy of the nation is that the government has kept those persons who were party to the previous government and they are in the SIT and they are loyal to their masters and not to the country,” he said.
Jethmalani also alleged the government was not making sufficient efforts to get from Germany the names of those holding illegal bank accounts in tax havens.
The court asked the Centre to file responses to the affidavits filed by Jethmalani and BJP leader Subramaniam Swamy.
The black money SIT on Tuesday placed before the apex court its third report on the progress of investigations in a sealed cover. The report said that prosecution was on in 166 black money cases and that 412 out of 624 cases pertained to Indian residents.
