Indians in #PanamaPapers list: Amitabh Bachchan, Aishwarya Rai, KP Singh, Iqbal Mirchi, Adani elder brother
Last year, it was Swiss Leaks, a global list with over 1,100 Indians with secret bank accounts in HSBC Geneva, which shaped the debate over black money parked overseas.
Now come The Panama Papers.
Over 500 Indians figure on the firm’s list of offshore companies, foundations and trusts. There are also 234 Indian passports (handed over by clients as part of the incorporation process), an eight-month-long investigation of over 36,000 files by The Indian Express has revealed.
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From film stars Amitabh Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan to corporates including DLF owner K P Singh and nine members of his family, and the promoters of Apollo Tyres and Indiabulls to Gautam Adani’s elder brother Vinod Adani. Two politicians who figure on the list are Shishir Bajoria from West Bengal and Anurag Kejriwal, the former chief of the Delhi unit of Loksatta Party.
From Mumbai ganglord the late Iqbal Mirchi, the list includes scores of businessmen with addresses in nondescript neighbourhoods in Panchkula, Dehradun, Vadodara and Mandsaur. Addresses of individuals, in many cases, The Indian Express found out, led to physical locations, but with no trace of the individual.
Or, as in one case, belonged to a tenement in a chawl in Mumbai.
Not just individuals, a close scrutiny of The Panama Papers by The Indian Express also reveals details of hitherto unknown deals, in some cases involving the government, too.
These include cricket franchise deals and, in several cases, linkages to those who have previously been under CBI or Income Tax scrutiny.
As per RBI norms, no Indian citizen could float an overseas entity before 2003 — in 2004, for the first time individuals were allowed to remit funds of up to $25,000 a year under the Liberalised Remittance Scheme, and this limit stands at $250,000 a year now.
But while RBI let individuals buy shares under LRS, it never allowed them to set up companies abroad, having clarified it through an FAQ mid-way in September 2010.
In most of the cases in The Panama Papers, companies were set up long before the rules were changed and the purpose, experts said, was to park foreign exchange in a tax haven. It was only in August 2013 that individuals were allowed to set up subsidiaries or invest in joint ventures under the Overseas Direct Investment window.
Indeed, records investigated reveal detailed correspondence between Indian tax authorities and those in British Virgin Islands, Seychelles, Panama or other tax havens seeking shareholder, bank account and asset details of offshore companies set up by Mossack Fonseca for Indians.
It is revelatory that authorities in these tax havens had no choice but to depend on Mossack Fonseca for information since, unlike India, the government is not a repository of ownership details.
The Panama Papers come at a time when the Special Investigating Team (SIT) on black money headed by former Supreme Court Judge M B Shah is finalising its new action-taken report.
The formation of the SIT was the very first decision taken by the Narendra Modi Government in May 2014.
The treasure trove of records was accessed by Munich-based newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung which a year ago collaborated with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and, in turn, with over 100 media organisations to investigate its contents.
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