Get India's Stolen Money Back

21 Apr 2010, 0116 hrs IST,M Padmakshan, ET Bureau MUMBAI: Income-tax officers probing into the accounts of the Indian Premier League (IPL) teams have reasons to believe that part of the funding for Shilpa Shetty and her husband for buying into Rajasthan Royals, came from multiple tax havens. One of the tax havens which has been used to route funds is Cayman Islands. When contacted by ET, Shilpa Shetty said: “It is an income-tax probe, not a media probe. We have already given all the necessary papers to the department, let them complete their inquiry. I, for now, do not want to comment on anything.” The initial information gathered by the I-T department after examining the papers obtained from the IPL offices clearly indicate that many IPL teams’ finances have their origins in tax havens. And, most of the team ownerships have a cobbled structure with three-four persons joining hastily to form a company, I-T officials told ET. In most cases, the initial bid was made by a sing...

  An income-tax raid on a Delhi-based infrastructure and power major with a turnover of over $2.5 billion led to the disclosure of unaccounted income worth Rs 212 crore. Assuming a profit rate of 10%, the disclosure also amounted to an admission that the businessman had withheld disclosing a turnover worth Rs 2,000 crore which, had it been accounted for, would have spelt big gains for other tax departments such as service tax , central excise, VAT and others. But with the departments failing to come together and with the income-tax department itself fighting shy of using stringent provisions in its armoury to deal with tax evaders, the businessman has got away simply by agreeing to pay income tax . This is not an isolated instance. Last month, a steel manufacturer on the outskirts of Delhi made a bigger disclosure after an income-tax raid. The reluctance of the I-T department to use provisions designed to deal with such cases and the lack of co-ordination amon...

fe Bureaus Posted online: Wednesday, Apr 14, 2010 at 0832 hrs New Delhi : India will now be able to officially initiate information exchange with at least nine tax havens and modify regulations to combat tax evasion. This will be possible because the government has approved the notification of these areas as 'specified territory'. Cayman Islands, Bermuda, British Virgin Islands that are often called tax havens would now be classified as special territory by the Indian government in the tax laws helping it to officially initiate talks with these jurisdictions with regard to tax avoidance and exchange of information. Till now the country could not officially initiate talks on the issue as agreements were signed between the two countries, India and the other country and there was no way how these specific areas could be dealt with. However, Section 90 of the Income Tax Act was amended by the Finance Act 2009 to enable the government to enter into an agreement with any specifi...

From Tax Justice Network: Swiss Banking Secrecy: The End is Nigh - Get Over it! The Swiss government continues to maintain its out-dated position on banking secrecy, but international tax lawyer Philippe Kenel, who also happens to head the Swiss Chamber of Commerce in Belgium and Luxembourg argues that this dogged unwillingness to recognise changing political realities will undermine the Swiss negotiating position. Interviewed in the Tribune de Gèneve, Kenel says: "Switzerland's only chance lies with negotiating the end of banking secrecy while it still has some value. Judging by the speed with which banking secrecy is being eroded, acting once we have our backs up against the wall, would be tantamount to waiting to be shot down. By that stage there would be nothing we could receive in return." Kepel also argues that the Swiss authorities should "immediately begin negotiations to move towards automatic information exchange (with the EU), pushing for a long-transi...

Switzerland seeks law change to hand details of UBS 'tax evaders' to United States Times Online, April 1, 2010 Switzerland will seek to override its courts in order to hand over over the names of thousands of suspected tax evaders to the US. The Swiss Federal Council, the government's Cabinet, wants the parliament to approve its decision so that it can give the names of 4,450 UBS customers to the US Internal Revenue Service. The agency believes that the customers placed money offshore in order to avoid paying tax in the United States. The council warned today: "Should Switzerland fail to fulfil its obligations under international law, there would be a risk that the legal and sovereignty conflict with the USA - with its detrimental impact on Switzerland's financial centre and economy - would flare up again." If the handover is not completed by August 19 then UBS, Switzerland's biggest bank, will face prosecution in the US for assisting tax evaders. The Swis...

April 01, 2010, 1:52 AM EDT By Patrick Donahue March 31 (Bloomberg) -- The German government has so far raised about 200 million euros ($270 million) in back taxes from secret accounts in Liechtenstein in the two years since it bought stolen bank data to track down tax evaders. The illicit disk purchased in 2008 from a former employee of the Liechtenstein princely house’s bank, LGT Group, has led to 588 investigations into tax violations, of which about a third have been completed, the government said today in Berlin in response to a parliamentary inquiry by Germany’s opposition Left Party. Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government said buying stolen information to find funds hidden in uncooperative tax havens is necessary, given the lack of automatic data exchange or legal assistance. Switzerland and Liechtenstein have refused to offer help if information presented has been stolen from banks. Buying such data “is in these cases the only way to be able to uncover tax evasion through a...