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Panama Papers: India gets information on 165 cases with links to offshore companies, says report

The Panama Papers leak is considered to be the largest among all the leaks that took place in the Journalism world.

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After acting on the Panama Papers leaks, tax authorities have obtained information from among 13 jurisdictions where Indian nationals had incorporated offshore companies through the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca, reported Indian Express.

The report said that the tax authorities have succeeded in obtaining 165 replies — partial or complete.

The development comes a year after the government  created a Multi-Agency Group (MAG) of probe agencies to go into these cases, comprising the IT department (CBDT), its foreign tax wing, the RBI, Financial Intelligence Unit and the Enforcement Directorate.

The number of Indian clients of Mossack Fonseca,  whose PAN numbers had been traced, has swelled to 424 and at least 205 have accepted links to offshore entities named in the Panama Papers, the report added.

The information was made available at the latest meeting of MAG. 

The report also said that through the Foreign Tax and Tax Research (FTTR) division of the Ministry of Finance, Indian tax authorities had sent  283 references to 13 offshore jurisdictions. It had asked for details on investment and bank account of entities linked to Indian nationals.

However, of the 283 references, only in 17 cases were “defects” found in requests sent by the Indian authorities.

"Scrutiny of data received from jurisdictions such as Cyprus, British Virgin Islands (BVI), Seychelles and Jersey are quite “substantial” in a few cases,"  Officials in the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) told the daily.

Last week, the Supreme Court asked the Centre to place before it in a sealed cover all the six reports of the Multi-Agency Group (MAG) constituted by the government to probe the Panama papers case.

The apex court had on November 24, 2016 sought a response from the petitioner on the plea of market regulator SEBI that it has been dragged as a party in a PIL seeking a court-monitored CBI probe against Indians whose names have figured in the Panama papers for allegedly holding bank accounts in foreign countries.

There are about 500 Indians named in the list which includes prominent businessmen, film celebrities and those belonging to lucrative professions.

The Panama Papers leaks contain an unprecedented amount of information, including more than 11 million documents covering 2,10,000 companies in 21 offshore jurisdictions. Each transaction spans different jurisdictions and may involve multiple entities and individuals.

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