File photo: The Supreme Court of India
The Centre will disclose the names of three persons who stashed away black money in foreign banks to the Supreme Court on Monday, sources have told NDTV. The account holders are not political personalities and the names will be part of an affidavit the government will file, they said.
The Centre will disclose more names of account holders to the court as and when the prosecution in the case begins, the sources added.
The Supreme Court, based on a petition by noted lawyer Ram Jethmalani, has created a special committee to look at how to recover black money. But the government had told the Supreme Court that it could not reveal the names received from other countries as it would violate the tax treaties with those countries.
The issue had come under the spotlight again after the Congress claimed the BJP's pre-poll promise of bringing back black money to India within 100 days of coming to power was bluster.
Last week, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley warned the Congress that it would face "embarrassment" because "a big name" from the party is on the list of Indians who hold illicit foreign bank accounts. The Congress had called it an attempted blackmail.
Mr Jaitley's predecessor and Congress leader P Chidambaram said it would be the individual who would be embarrassed and not the party. "These are individual transgressions," he said in an exclusive interview to NDTV.
In April, while Mr Chidambaram was Finance Minister, a list of Indians with bank accounts in Liechtenstein was given to the Supreme Court, but both the previous UPA government and the current NDA government said the names must be kept confidential for now.
Mr Jaitley had said tax treaties ban the disclosure of names at preliminary stages of inquiry. In many cases, the investigations were close to completion and the names would then be shared with the Supreme Court, at which point, they would become public via the media. Mr Chidambaram had said legally, it was the correct position.