NEW DELHI: The Special Investigation Team (SIT), appointed by the Supreme Court to probe black money cases on Tuesday submitted its second preliminary report before the court. The case is likely to be heard next week.
Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi, on behalf of the government, had last month submitted a list of 627 names having accounts in HSBC Bank, Geneva before the court. All the 627 accounts are at HSBC Bank in Geneva -- the details of which the Indian government got from the French authorities.
The court however, did not go through the report and said that the envelopes would be opened by chairman M B Shah and vice chairman Arijit Pasayat, both former Judges of the Supreme Court, who are part of the court-appointed SIT, and decide on the future course of action.
“The SIT is our representative and we have full faith on them, let them do the further investigations,” the Bench remarked.
It asked the SIT to conduct a probe against the account holders and submit the status report of its probe as expeditiously as possible.
The SIT had submitted the report after gathering information on the names submitted by the government. It had submitted its first report in August this year.
The Centre had submitted before the court that almost half of the account holders were resident Indians, who could be prosecuted under the Income Tax laws, while the rest of them were NRIs. Some of the account holders have already admitted to having accounts and having paid taxes.
Details of account holders were supplied by the French government to the Centre in 2011. Most transactions in those accounts took place during 1999 and 2000. The last date for completion and assessment in all these cases is March 31, 2015.