New Delhi: TIMES NEWS NETWORK: As the special investigation team (SIT) on black money completes one year in office, the government is in the process of setting up an investigation unit which will act as a permanent institutional mechanism to deal with probes related to black money, both within and outside the country.
The investigation unit is most likely to be headed by a commissioner-level officer and will function under the revenue department in the finance ministry. It will have officers drawn from the CBI, I-T department, department of revenue intelligence, the Intelligence Bureau, Financial Intelligence Unit and the Serious Fraud Investigation Office as part of the team to investigate cases, a source said.
India on Wednesday joined the Multilateral Competent Authority Agreement along with France, Australia, Canada, Costa Rica, Indonesia and New Zealand on automatic exchange of financial information. This multilateral automatic information exchange body already has 94 signatories, including Switzerland and many of the tax havens with whom India has long been negotiating exchange of banking information related to its citizens.
These 94 countries have committed to exchange information on an automatic basis from 2017 onwards as per the agreement. Coinciding with the signing of this pact, the Central Board of Direct Taxes on Wednesday issued a directive to its income tax officials to maintain secrecy on all such information and the subsequent investigation of cases.
This 'separate infrastructure' of the SIT will conduct and coordinate a multi-agency probe on cases of black money both within and outside India, said a senior official from the finance ministry.
This is a departure from previous UPA regime where then finance minister Pranab Mukherjee had constituted Directorate of Criminal Investigation within the I-T department and mandated it to probe all black money cases.
Keep foreign info secret: CBDT to taxmen
The Central Board of Direct Taxes has issued instructions to taxmen to ensure that information on individuals holding black money abroad is strictly kept secret as any "careless" act could give the country providing the data an excuse not to help India in future. "In many countries, governments have given commitments to their citizens... that information will not be provided under the tax treaty if the recipient country has not complied with its obligations ... to protect the confidentiality of information and use it solely for collecting and enforcing taxes... Any breach may give them (foreign nations) an excuse to not to provide information in future," CBDT told its officials. AGENCIES
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