New Delhi:
While the government has submitted a list of 627 Indians who hold accounts at HSBC to the Supreme Court today, sources in the tax department say that the black money that the government can hope to recover - including penalties - is Rs 3,000 crore, an amount that greatly dampens talk of billions of dollars that could be brought back to India.
Officials familiar with the list of account holders given today to court present a series of challenges that await the government.
Of the 600-odd account holders, about 150 have paid taxes or penalties already since the names were handed over to India a few years ago. Their cases must be treated as settled, said sources, and they cannot be prosecuted now.
On an average, the accounts hold about 40-50 crores each, said sources. A few tip the scales with a balance of between 500 and 1,000 cores, but they are held by trusts in tax havens, and do not list individuals' names. Income tax officials say they have failed to uncover the beneficiaries of these trusts.
Of the 627 listed Indians, at least 120 have denied holding any account abroad - those claims are tough to disprove. Income tax officials cannot ask HSBC to verify them because the list of account holders was leaked by a French employee at the bank's Geneva branch. Swiss officials say the data is stolen and cannot comment on it. However, recently, Delhi managed to persuade them to share some information on those Indians against whom evidence has already been collected at home.
Raids on account holders are untenable; income tax officials say they cannot justify these legally because they don't have enough evidence or information to merit searches.
Sources say India is trying to get from Germany a fresh list of 8,000 accounts held in Switzerland, but negotiations are stalled over concerns that Delhi will violate key confidentiality clauses - tax treaties with foreign countries forbid the disclosure of names before charges are framed.
The Supreme Court has been monitoring plans to recover black money since 2009 on the request of lawyer Ram Jethmalani. In addition to the HBSC list, which was given to India by France in 2011, Germany has supplied a list of 18 Indians with accounts in Lichtenstein.
The court has described as inadequate the progress made by the previous Congress government and the new Modi administration; it has asked a special team it formed of former judges and regulators to now examine the list of foreign account holders and determine the course of action.
Significantly, the court has made it clear that it will not release the names for now.