This Article is From Apr 25, 2011

Black money case: Supreme Court decision on SIT today

Black money case: Supreme Court decision on SIT today
New Delhi: The Supreme Court will resume hearing on the black money issue today. The court will decide on whether to set up a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to probe the matter further. The Centre has been opposed to this demand.

During the last hearing, the Supreme Court had hit out at the Centre and pointed out that it has been concentrating only on one individual - Pune-based businessman Hasan Ali - and nothing has been done on other cases.

"Only one person on this country has an account in Switzerland. No other Indian has an account?  You are working from 2009. What information do you have?" asked the court.

In what's intended to be a wake-up call, the Supreme Court rebuked the government over doing far too little to investigate those Indians who've tunneled black money in foreign bank accounts.

The court had said, "You say different agencies are looking into the issue. Till now what these agencies were doing? Are they sleeping?"

Despite the Centre's reluctance on constituting SIT to probe black money, Supreme Court made its intentions clear that only an SIT can get to the bottom of the issue.

Mr Ali was arrested last month and since then has been extensively interrogated, largely at the Supreme Court's insistence, about money-laundering and possible links to international arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi and terrorist networks.

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