NEW DELHI: Responding to the statement made by the Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley that the Congress ‘will not have many reasons to celebrate’ after the details into the Panama Papers comes out, Congress leader Sandeep Dikshit on Monday said that nobody is happy by the names that are coming out and if in future there are names coming out of the grand old party then it is not going to protect anybody.
“The Finance Minister must realize that nobody is happy by the names coming out. If in future there are names coming out of the Congress party then we are not going to protect anybody. Anybody who has broken the law must be countered and action must be taken against them whether the named that are coming out or who names have already come,” Dikshit told ANI here.
He said that it is not a matter of celebration and the Finance Minister doesn’t really know what he is talking about.
“Congress has not celebrated any names coming in. We are saddened by the fact that there may be industrialist, socially and politically prominent people who may have staunched their money abroad. In any way it is a matter of investigation. It is also being coming to notice that they are just keeping bank account abroad, it is not necessarily illegal we have to find out whether these are illegal accounts,” he added.
Dikshit also said that the Finance Minister wants to make a political issue out of it.
“How does he know which are the names that are coming. How does he know that the Congress’s name will come? Why didn’t the government take any action regarding this? he asked.
Retaliating at the Congress Party who questioned Prime Minister Narendra Modi's silence on the Panama Papers expose, Jaitley had yesterday said that the 'Congress will not have many reasons to celebrate' when the details come out in this case.
Answering to reporters on the impartiality on the probe of the global list of people with secret firms in tax havens, Jaitley said “It is very impartial, and a multi-agency probe is going on. When the details will come out, Congress will not have many reasons to celebrate.”
Asserting that the probe in the Panama Papers is being done in a ‘very impartial way’ Jaitley refuted the Congress and Aam Aadmi Party's (AAP) demand that he should 'recuse' himself from the matter.
The Congress has demanded that the Panama Papers be handed over to Supreme Court, which is looking into the black money issue, alleging the BJP government's decision to constitute a multi-agency group was a "shoddy attempt" to brush aside the issue.
The Congress and AAP had sought to link sports promoter Lokesh Sharma, who figures in the Mossack Fonseca papers, with Jaitley.
Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi had earlier questioned Prime Minister Narendra Modi's 'silence' over the name of the son of BJP's Chattisgarh chief minister figuring in the Panama Papers case.