Panama Papers: ED questions Aishwarya

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, Dec 20

Bollywood star Aishwarya Rai Bachchan today appeared before the Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Monday to join the probe in connection with the 2016 ‘Panama Papers’ tax leak case. Her statement was recorded under the Foreign Exchange Management Act. The actress handed over a few documents to the investigators.

Names of several world leaders and celebrities who had stashed away money in offshore companies were mentioned in the ‘Panama Papers’, an investigation of records with Panama’s law firm Mossack Fonseca by Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). The leaked tranche had 426 India-linked cases.

Officials said the ED has been probing the case linked to the Bachchans since 2016-17. It had issued notices to the Bachchan family, asking them to explain their foreign remittances since 2004 under the Reserve Bank of India’s Liberalised Remittance Scheme (LRS). Some other instances of alleged irregularities linked with the family are under the scanner too, the sources said.

Aishwarya, the ICIJ said, was found to have links with an offshore entity in the British Virgin Islands (BVI) created in 2005. Her family was stated to be part of this offshore entity that had an “initial authorised capital of USD 50,000”. The company was reportedly dissolved in 2008.

Abhishek Bachchan too has been examined in the past in another instance linked to the tax leak case, the sources added.