Get India's Stolen Money Back

  May 27, 2010  MUMBAI: The famously secretive Swiss private banks are trying to persuade Indians to bring back the money they have pulled out from their numbered accounts in these banks. In the last one year, more than a hundred Indians with secret accounts have shifted money from Switzerland to banks in Dubai Free Trade Zone and Singapore amid fears of regulatory and government action. “The Swiss banks are now reaching out to these clients to get back the funds they have lost. There’s no estimate of how much money has moved out, but it could be substantial in absolute terms,” said a senior Mumbai-based professional dealing in tax and cross-border transactions. And interestingly, some of the account holders have moved back money to Swiss banks because of their long relationship with these private wealth managers. “But there’s a difference. The money that’s going back may not be parked in a numbered account. Instead, it could be a corporate deposit,” said a foreign excha...

by CBI on May 21, 2010 08:13 PM Hide replies (v) Failure to pay to the credit of the Central Government the tax deducted at source. [Section 276B] (va) Failure to pay the tax collected at source. [Section 276BB] (vi) Wilful attempt to evade any tax, penalty or interest [Section 276C(1)] (vii) Wilful attempt to evade the payment of any tax, penalty or interest levied under Income Tax Act. [Section 276C(2)] (viii) Wilful failure to furnish in due time return of income. [Section 276CC)] (viiia) Failure to furnish return of income in Search Cases as required under section 158BC [Section 276CCC] (ix) Wilful failure to produce accounts and documents as directed by issue of notice under section 142(1) [Section 276D] (x) Wilful failure to get the accounts audited as directed by the Assessing Officer under section 142(2A). [Section 276D] (xi) Making of a statement in verification or delivery of an account or statement which is false and which the concerned person knows or believes to...

Switzerland on Thursday said it would share data of black money allegedly stashed away by Indians in Swiss banks in accordance with the tax treaty between the two countries. "The release of data shall be in accordance to the provisions of the double taxation (avoidance) treaty between the two countries," Switzerland [ Images ] Ambassador Philippe Welti told reporters on a query about Swiss government's stance on providing information about money from India [ Images ] stashed in Swiss banks. Both countries have completed talks on revising the existing double tax avoidance agreement to seek information on black money. Welti said, "The dialogue on revision has been in very specific direction that is to add tax frauds case as a qualification for request and also tax evasion cases to qualify for the release of data." "Some other countries have also made similar requests, and negotiations have taken place, say two or three rounds so far and they have found ag...

4 May 2010, 0554 hrs IST,J Raipura, Skeletons are supposedly tumbling as the income-tax authorities and investigative journalists with unnamed sources are probing the Indian Premier League. First, the easy targets. Match-fixing , for starters. Nobody seems to be asking who are involved. And where is any evidence to conclude the allegation to be prima facie worth investigating? Nobody is suggesting that Indian cricket is all clean. But it's easy to make wild allegations and claim immunity from having to prove anything as ‘just about everybody knows' . Move to ‘betting' . It is rumoured that thousands of crores are wagered on every single IPL match and that it is a transnational industry . What is, per se, wrong with betting other than the fact that it has not been legalised to collect some taxes? Betting on horses is legal. We have had single-digit lotteries conducted by state governments. Casinos are a rage world over. Instead of acknowledging our desire to gamble and p...

By Ralf Isermann (AFP) – May 5, 2010 AUGSBURG, Germany — A German court on Wednesday sentenced a Canadian-German arms dealer, a key player in a party funding scandal that helped propel Chancellor Angela Merkel to power, to eight years in prison. Karlheinz Schreiber, 76, who holds dual Canadian and German citizenship, was found guilty of withholding some 7.5 million euros (9.7 million dollars) in taxes between 1988 and 1993 by a court in the southern city of Augsburg. The verdict brought to an end the second high-profile case against Schreiber, whose dealings with former Canadian prime minister Brian Mulroney resulted in the latter being forced to explain himself at a public inquiry. Sentencing Schreiber, presiding judge Rudolf Weigell said he wanted to disprove the prejudice that in such cases, "you fry the small fish and let the big fish go free." Schreiber "bribes anything and anyone when things are not going well and then defrauds the state anyway he can," W...

The Guardian (Nigeria), May 7, 2010 SIR: Several years ago, the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO) reported that about $107 billion of Nigerian money was held in private accounts and assets in the United States and Europe. More recently, the Global Financial Integrity (GFI) think tank showed that Nigeria lost $89.5 billion in illegal outflows to developed nations, between 1970 - 2008. The other week, Nigerian newspapers published the names of 80 prominent Nigerians who were alleged to have partaken in the Halliburton N27 billion NLNG bribe. Included in this list, are four former heads of state, to former first ladies, a former vice president and 74 other prominent compatriots from every region of Nigeria. These reports beg the questions: Is the arrest and prosecution suspected of corruption the only tool capable of checking and ameliorating the plague of corruption in the past 50 years? Is it realistic to believe that any Nigerian government in the near future...

By Bryan Bender, Globe Staff May 15, 2010 WASHINGTON — An informal money-exchange network known as “hawala’’ — a centuries-old system that operates outside conventional banking networks — is at the center of the investigation into three Pakistanis arrested Thursday in Massachusetts and Maine with alleged ties to the suspect in the failed Times Square bomb plot, law enforcement officials said yesterday. The men, who were detained on immigration charges after several raids across the Northeast, were described by government officials as having funneled money to Pakistani-born Faisal Shahzad, who is in federal custody for trying to set off a car bomb earlier this month. The three men are being investigated for possibly using the hawala system to provide money that Shahzad used to finance the plot, the officials said yesterday. But finding out where any such funds originated could prove exceedingly difficult, according to government officials and specialists in terrorist financing, who s...