New Delhi, May 2
The Centre today informed the Supreme Court that it had obtained from Germany details of secret bank accounts pertaining to Indian citizens "on the condition of strict confidentiality" and as such could not be made public.

The details had already been "forwarded" to various taxation authorities for "appropriate action" under the provisions of the Income Tax and Wealth Tax Acts, Priya VK Singh, Director in the Department of Revenue, Ministry of Finance, said in an affidavit filed in the court.

The information was received only on March 18 this year, but the tax authorities had already initiated the process of reopening the assessments under the Income Tax Act, 1961, and Wealth Tax Act, 1957, the Ministry said.

The government has filed the affidavit in response to a PIL filed by former Law Minister Ram Jethmalani, former Punjab police chief KPS Gill and four other "super senior citizens" seeking a direction for bringing back black money running into lakhs of crores stashed away in overseas tax havens.

The matter will come up for hearing in the apex court on Monday.

The Ministry said it first shot off a letter to Germany on February 27, 2008, the same day when media reports talked of German government’s willingness to share information available with it in respect of account holders in LGT Bank, Liechtenstein. Since then, the government relentlessly pursued the issue with Germany, sending out communication at least on 15 occasions, through letters, e-mails and telephonically, the affidavit said.

Further, India had “already approached” the Swiss government, seeking re-negotiation of the Article concerning exchange of information under the Double Taxation Avoidance Agreement (DTAA). “Under the circumstances, the Union government has acted with utmost expedition in the matter.”

All this showed that the contention of the petitioners, who also included former Lok Sabha secretary general Subhash Kashyap, that the government had failed to take any action to check the parallel economy by bringing back Rs 70 lakh crore siphoned off from the country was wrong, the government contended.

Apparently rebutting the charge that such a huge amount of black money had been taken out of the country, the affidavit said: “I state and submit that there are no authentic figures about the amount of money lying in those bank accounts.”

The PIL had talked of the Income Tax Department serving notices on one Hasan Ali Khan of Pune and his co-conspirators (Kashinath Tapuria and wife Chandrika from Kolkata), demanding a tax of Rs 40,000 crore and Rs 20,580 crore, respectively.

The Finance Ministry, however, gave a higher figure of Rs 71,848.59 crore. “…I state and submit that the Income Tax Department, on the basis of seized documents and other materials gathered during investigations, have raised total demand of Rs 71,848.59 crore against the said Ali Khan, his wife, Rheema Khan and other associates,” the Ministry official said.

Further, the Enforcement Directorate of the Ministry had, on December 29, 2008, issued a show cause notice to Hasan Ali Khan for “unauthorised dealing of USD 8 billion” (approximate) in contravention of the provisions of the Foreign Exchange Management Act, 1999. Khan filed his interim reply on January 7.

“…I state and submit that the investigation carried out till date, in respect of both Kashinath Tapuria and his wife Tapuria, reveals existence of certain overseas bank accounts. The government is in the process of obtaining details of the said accounts. The passports of Tapuria couple are under the possession” of the Directorate, the Ministry official said. The couple was last questioned on February 9, 23 and 24.

Questioning the timing and the political affiliations of some of the petitioners, the government said the issues raised by them pertained to “policy, regulation, economic affairs, international cooperation and political leadership and, therefore, do not qualify for examination by standards of judicial review”.

A number of people had sought and obtained black money details under the Right to Information Act, 2005, but the petitioners “have chosen to make wild, reckless and baseless allegations” against the Centre without taking recourse to such methods, the affidavit said.

“In view of the above, I state and submit that the allegation of inaction against the Central Government leveled by the Petitioner purportedly acting out of public interest are baseless and devoid of any merits and deserves to be dismissed with costs,” it said.

The PIL had relied on a newspaper article by one Raja Vaidyanathan who was a member of a Task Force constituted by the BJP to unearth black money, while Jethmalani’s son, Mahesh, was contesting the ongoing Lok Sabha poll on the saffron party ticket, the affidavit pointed out.