Black money in Switzerland and other tax havens

[SLASH]

Yes get the black money back to India and into the same politicians hands.

 

[lcatejas]

Current govt given these culprits ample time to transfer it to some other location ... not even have balls to show the names.... Kaun Apne pairon me kulhadi Mare...

 

[Raj30]

New estimate pegs India's black money at Rs. 25 lakh cr - Hindustan Times

 

[LETHALFORCE]

New estimates are 1.4 trillion in switzerland from India. There are probably billions
more in Mauritius and lichenstein etc...

 

[Sridhar]

Global media investigation finds 612 Indian firms in tax havens

Global media investigation finds 612 Indian firms in tax havens - Indian Express

 

[Sridhar]

Indians in Tax Haven II
Appu Esthose Suresh , Ritu Sarin : Thu Oct 17 2013, 01:04 hrs Small Large Print

Appu Esthose and Suresh Ritu Sarin profile the new set of Indians found to have invested in tax havens such as the British Virgin Islands (BVI).

ANAND K PANDIT

A diamond merchant, Pandit was a director on the board of Bank of Maharashtra when he floated Marvelous Wealth Offshore Ltd in the BVI in February 2008. He quit as director of Bank of Maharashtra in July 2012 and went on to become a director on the board of Syndicate Bank. Mr Anand Pandit is not having any interest in the said company, his spokesperson said in response to queries from The Indian Express. Therefore the other queries listed are not relevant.

SURENDRA KUMAR JAIN

Jain was a key accused in the Jain hawala case of the mid-1990s which collapsed for want of evidence. The CBI had claimed it had details of the alleged secret accounts maintained by Jain but could not conclusively prove a quid pro quo or the money trail. Jain, his wife Poonam and daughter Geetika are listed as âbeneficiary owners of BVI firm Armoric Management Pte Ltd which was registered in July 2007. His family said he was out of the country and could not be reached for comment.

VIVEK NAGPAL

Nagpal and his firm Padmini Financial Services Ltd were suspected of wrongdoing in the stock market manipulation scandal involving stock broker Ketan Parekh more than a decade back. In February 2007, Sebi banned Nagpal from operating in the stock markets for five years. Months earlier, Nagpal and his wife Aarti, also a director in Padmini Financial, floated Grand Accent Overseas Ltd in the BVI in June 2006. Nagpal was not available for comment.

SADEEV SINGH SANDHU

A financial consultant, Sandhu was found guilty of non-compliance of Sebi's takeover rules in April 2008. Subsequently, his company Kausar India Ltd was placed on a watchlist by Sebi and the Ministry of Corporate Affairs. In January 2009, Sandhu floated Melway Investments Ltd in the BVI. Sandhu, who happens to be the brother of former Intelligence Bureau chief and current deputy National Scurity Adviser Nehchal Sandhu, denied any link to Melway. âI donât know about any such firm, certainly not in my name,â he said.

3C DEVELOPERS

Vidur Bharadwaj, Nirmal Singh and Surpreet Singh Suri, promoters of 3C Developers, started Odessa Group International Ltd in the BVI in October 2007. But a company spokesperson said Odessa was inoperative.M/s Odessa Group was completely inoperative and no operations of any kind were undertaken when this company was existing and we have no links with it, the spokesperson said.

KABUL CHAWLA

A promoter of real estate firm BPTP Developers, Chawla floated BVI firm Green Point Trust in July 2009. He declined to respond to queries sent to him.

VIPUL SHAH

Shah, a promoter of real estate firm Parinee Group, started Next Point International Ltd in the BVI in August 2006. He said the company âmust have been part of corporate restructuring, but fully compliant with laws.

PRASOON MUKHERJEE

A prominent Singapore-based NRI businessman and promoter of Universal Success Enterprise, Prasoon Mukherjee incorporated BuzConnect Universal Ltd in the BVI in July 2007. Universal is estimated to have invested $25 billion in India's energy sector and has a presence in West Bengal, Maharashtra and Gujarat. He did not respond to queries.

DHRUV LAMBA

Lamba is the CEO of fast-growing FMCG firm Kwality Group which is into food products, including the popular ice cream of the same name, and restaurants. Lamba registered Blackrose Holdings Inc in the BVI in December 2007. He did not respond to queries.

RAJIV SAWHNEY

Presently the CEO of Mahindra Club & Resorts, Sawhney was a part of the core team that built the telecom business of Hutchison in India and was also closely involved with the telecom business of Essar Group in India and Africa. Sawhney was also a director in Loop Telecom Ltd and Loop Mobile (India) Ltd. He floated BVI firm Brookwood Worldwide Ltd in August 2007. The company was there at a point when I was not living in India. And it ceased to exist when I moved in here,â he told The Indian Express.

SHACHINDRA NATH

The CEO of Religare. Nath is also a director in 30 companies, mostly subsidiaries of Religare Enterprise Ltd. Nath registered his BVI firm Medical Management Company Ltd (MMCL) in October 2009. âMMCL was not incorporated by Religare or any of its management team members. Religare acquired Hichens, Harrison & Co. Plc in May 2008âHowever, Religare subsequently divested its entire stake in MMCL... Mr Shachindra Nath resigned as a director from the board of MMCL in October 2009,â a Religare spokesperson said on behalf of Nath.

VIVEK BANSAL

Bansal is a director on the board of Liberty Shoes Ltd, a Rs 600 crore company. His family is among the promoters of the group. Bansal registered BVI firm Imax Investment Worldwide Ltd in January 2005. Mr Vivek Bansal is on the board of Liberty Shoes Ltd as an independent director and he has neither any stake in the company nor any pecuniary relationship with the company or its promotersâas per the information shared by Mr Vivek Bansal with the company, he is not having any directorship or association with the entities mentioned, Liberty said in a statement.

RAJAN SWAROOP

A senior executive with Bharti Airtel India Ltd, Swaroop moved to India recently to works as executive director with Indiaâs largest cellular phone service provider. When he was posted as CEO and managing director of Airtel Nigeria, he floated Anacool International Ltd in the BVI in April 2008. A long time back, I was hoping to start some service business, which did not materialize. So the company is defunct ever since, he said, adding that he did not report it to the RBI or income tax authorities since there were no transactions.

Indians in Tax Haven II - Indian Express

 

[Sridhar]

'IAS officer and wife of Delhi power secy among those who invested in tax haven'

A now-retired IAS officer who was awarded the Padma Shri, the wife of another serving IAS officer, a lawyer named in connection with the alleged kickbacks paid in the AgustaWestland helicopter scandal, top corporate executives, real estate developers and diamond merchants figure in a new list of Indians who have invested in tax havens II such as the British Virgin Islands (BVI).

They are among 612 Indians whose names were published in a global media exposé earlier this year and more than 500 of them have now got notices from the income tax department, seeking details and transactions of all their offshore firms and trusts.

The exposé by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), in collaboration with 38 media organisations around the world, including the The Indian Express, was published in early April.

It contained details of more than 1.2 lakh offshore companies and trusts of individuals and companies in more than 170 countries and territories, including 612 Indians.

Of these 612, The Indian Express had published a first list of 20 prominent names that included two Members of Parliament — Lok Sabha Congress MP Vivekanand Gaddam and RS member Vijay Mallya — and several industrialists such as Ravikant Ruia, Samir Modi, Chetan Burman, Abhay Kumar Oswal, Rahul Mammen Mappillai, Teja Raju, Saurabh Mittal and Vinod Doshi.

The new names being published Wednesday include former IAS officer Anil Lakhina; Delhi power secretary R K Verma's wife Ritu Verma; Gautam Khaitan, a lawyer named in connection with the AgustaWestland helicopter scandal; and Anand K Pandit, a director on the board of Syndicate Bank.

n Lakhina registered a company named Vanazon Ltd., in the BVI in October 2007 when he was a senior IAS officer and chairman and managing director of the public sector Rural Electrification Corporation. Lakhina, who headed REC from August 2005 to February 2008, is listed as a shareholder in Vanazon.

IAS officers need the government's permission to own shares in a company while RBI approval is required to open a company abroad. There is no evidence to suggest Lakhina obtained either.

Lakhina was conferred the Padma Shri in 1986 for his innovative style of maintaining files, which went on to be described as the 'Lakhina model'. He retired in 2008.

"I have no recollection about such an entity. And I no longer live in the New Delhi address given," Lakhina said when reached for his comment.

n Ritu Verma, wife of Delhi power secretary R K Verma, is a shareholder in Windsor Incorporation Inc., which was started in July 2007 with an authorised share capital of $50,000. The memorandum of association and other company documents say it is involved in "investment". A housewife, Ritu Verma gave the official residential address of her husband when Windsor was being incorporated. R K Verma declined to comment.

n Khaitan, a Delhi-based lawyer, registered Windsor Group Holdings Ltd in the BVI on May 12, 2009. He was also on the board of Chandigarh-based company Aeromatrix, which Italian investigators have alleged was one of the channels through which kickbacks in the IAF's VVIP helicopter deal were distributed.

The investigators had also alleged that Khaitan was partially a partner in a Mauritius company called Interstellar Technologies Ltd., which they suspected was the node through which most payments were made.

The other partners in Interstellar were the three brothers of former air chief S P Tyagi and Swiss-based middlemen Guido Haschke and Carlo Gerosa.

Reached for his comment on registering Windsor in the BVI, Khaitan said: "I deny having any such company registered in the BVI."

Details of the new names are published on Latest News, Breaking News Live, Current Headlines, India News Online - The Indian Express.

A Central Board of Direct Taxes analysis of the offshore data has found that 170 names on the list had used their addresses in Mumbai to register the entities in the British Virgin Islands and 113 had used Delhi addresses. The income tax notices have also been sent to 44 addresses in Kolkata, 32 in Bangalore, 26 in Chennai and 14 in Hyderabad, among others.

The two-page notices - sent by investigation wings of the income tax department in Delhi and Mumbai and accessed by The Indian Express - demand full disclosure by owners of these entities.

They demand all details and transactions of all offshore companies/firms/ trusts as well as all transactions of the entities with the domestic firms of those who have registered these offshore entities.

The addressees have been asked to give details about having disclosed such transactions to the income tax department in the past. They have also been asked to submit a set of eight listed documents which include all details of incorporation, financial statements, investments and loans/advances for each offshore company.

The addressees have been given one month's time to reply with proof that all offshore financial interests and transactions had been disclosed in their 2012-13 IT returns as required by law.

Several NRIs on the list - who are entitled to immunity from declaring their offshore assets and investments - have also received the income tax notices and have been asked to appear either in person or send their representatives to explain the transactions.

Appuesthose Suresh, Ritu Sarin
'IAS officer and wife of Delhi power secy among those who invested in tax haven' - Indian Express

 

[Ray]

North Block and South Block is the cave with the treasure president over by Ali Baba and his innumerable umber of thieves!

What a sad commentary!

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

 

[hello_10]

'IAS officer and wife of Delhi power secy among those who invested in tax haven'

Details of the new names are published on Latest News, Breaking News Live, Current Headlines, India News Online - The Indian Express.

Appuesthose Suresh, Ritu Sarin
'IAS officer and wife of Delhi power secy among those who invested in tax haven' - Indian Express

Global media investigation finds 612 Indian firms in tax havens

Global media investigation finds 612 Indian firms in tax havens - Indian Express

New estimates are 1.4 trillion in switzerland from India. There are probably billions
more in Mauritius and lichenstein etc...

New estimate pegs India's black money at Rs. 25 lakh cr -

thats why people like swiss chocolates

Yes get the black money back to India and into the same politicians hands.

what a great and beautiful country Switzerland.surviving on world black money

the same thing was discussed in the article as below too :ranger:

Dollar Billionaires in Poor Countries: India's "Philantrocapitalism"
September 10, 2012

In this time of global financial crisis, when so many are suffering financial hardship, most countries have witnessed increases in their number of dollar millionaires. These 'High Net-Worth Individuals' (HNWI), according to a report by Capgemini and Merrill Lynch Wealth Management, have in recent years more than doubled in India. In 2008-09, India had 84,000 HNWIs. By 2010, it had risen by 50 per cent (126,700), the biggest increase of all countries.

In the worldwide list of dollar billionaires for 2010, India ranked third with 69, behind China (128) and the US (403). Forbes states, however, that the wealthiest 100 Indians are collectively worth $276 billion, while their top 100 Chinese counterparts are worth $170 billion. The three richest Indians together had more wealth the top 24 Chinese billionaires combined.

You don't have to look very far for evidence of their wealth, with more than 30 luxury skyscrapers springing up in Mumbai. For the rich occupants, the taller, the better, to escape from the reality of India below — the railway tracks, low-rise tenements, choking traffic and the 55 per cent of the city's population who live in slums. People are paying nearly two million dollars for a designer apartment, built in complexes with private cinemas, swimming pools, floodlit tennis courts and high-level security. Developers believe each year Mumbai can absorb between 30,000 and 40,000 more homes in the one million dollar-plus category. (Another housing bubble in the making?)

Such extreme wealth doesn't go unnoticed. In the UK, people are questioning the decision to keep giving India some $460 million of aid annually, which makes India the largest single recipient of British aid. Many ordinary Brits are asking if it can be right that the downtrodden British taxpayer gives such sums to a nation that boasts such wealth (albeit highly concentrated).

Siphoning off the country's wealth

Some of the most damning comments about India come from French author Dominique Lapierre, whose book royalties from 'City of Joy' fund projects for the underprivileged in India. He is frustrated by the greed and corruption that he encounters.

Lapierre's non profit organisation, City of Joy Aid, runs a network of clinics, schools, rehabilitation centres and hospital boats. It operates 14 projects in India, most in the Sunderbans area. However, 90 per cent of free medicines get stolen in the journey from Delhi to Kolkata, and the project is thus forced to buy them at high prices from the market.

A few years ago, Lapierre set up in Delhi a trust which offers a tax-deductible certificate for all donations. With more than a hint of disappointment, he notes the foundation still does not have any funds from affluent Indians who seem reluctant to help their fellow country-folk.

Quite the opposite, it seems. Much of India's wealth has been creamed off into Swiss banks, robbing ordinary folk of a quality of life they can now only but dream of. According to some estimates, it could be over Rs 7,280,000 crore (around $1.6 trillion). Data from the Swiss Banking Association in 2006 indicated that India had more black money than the rest of the world combined, or 13 times India's total national debt. Global Finance Integrity notes this siphoning of wealth has served to widen the gap between rich and poor and asserts the main guilty parties have been private organisations and High Net Worth Individuals.

By contrast, Global management and consulting firm Bain notes philanthropic donations amount to just 0.6 per cent of India's GDP. This is not too good when compared to giving in the US and UK, for example, but is better than rates in other developing countries like Brazil and China. In the US, individuals and corporations are responsible for 75 per cent of charitable gifts, whereas in India individual and corporate donations make up only 10 per cent of charitable giving. Some 65 per cent comes from India's central and state government, and the remaining gifts are provided by foreign organisations.

In India, giving does not rise with income and education. As a percentage of household income, donations by the wealthy actually decrease. From an analysis of 30 HNWIs in India, Bain noted that they contribute, on average, just around one-fourth of one per cent of their net worth to social and charitable causes.

All of this is not meant to imply that philanthropy is absent in India. Far from it. Vineet Nayyar's Rs 30 crore gift (just under $7 million) to the Essel Social Welfare Foundation is a high-profile example of philanthropic giving. Over the years, Rohini Nilekani has donated $40 million to numerous causes that try to tackle the root causes of social problems and not merely the symptoms. Her biggest contribution has been to Arghyam, a Bangalore foundation that promotes clean water and hygiene, which now has projects in 800 villages. Philanthropy can and does positively impact people's daily lives.

Philanthrocapitalism: a plaster on a gaping wound

What is really required, though, is a proper redistributive system of taxation, effective welfare provision and genuine economic democracy through forms of common ownership to help address inequality and poverty. In the absence of such things, wealthy philanthrocapitalists will have a major say in deciding which problems are addressed and how, and some will be highly selective.

For instance, critics of Bill Gates say his foundation often ends up favouring his commercial investments. Instead of paying taxes to the state coffers, he donates his profits where it is favourable to him economically, such as supporting GM crops in Africa or high tech patented medicines. 'Giving' often acts as a smokescreen for channeling funds into pet projects and 'business as usual', with rich corporations receiving money to shape the world in their own image and ultimately for their own benefit. Apparent benevolence can have sinister motives, just like certain governments which provide money in the form of 'development aid' that is intentionally used to fund actions that serve geo-political self interest and ultimately undermine the recipient state.

Philanthropy isn't necessarily opposed to capitalism; it's very much part of it. Capitalism is designed to ensure that the flow of wealth goes upwards and remains there via, among other things, the privatisation of public assets, deregulation of the financial sector, the use of subsidies and tax policies that favour the rich, the legal obligation to maximise shareholder profits and the consistent downward pressures on labour costs.

Professor Ha Joon Chang of Cambridge University says that economics isn't a social science anymore, but adopts the role the Catholic Church played in medieval Europe. Essentially, economic neo liberalism is secular theology used to justify the prevailing system, with the hope that some drops of wealth will trickle down an extremely thin funnel to placate the mass of the population. Widening the funnel slightly by making benevolent donations will not address the underlying issues of a failed system.

For example, consider that one in four people in India is hungry and every second child is underweight and stunted. Environmentalist Vandana Shiva argues that hunger is a structural part of the design of the industrialised, globalised food system and of the design of capital-intensive, chemical-intensive monocultures of industrial agriculture. The long-term solution for hunger lies in moving away from and challenging the centralised, globalised food supply controlled by a handful of profiteering corporations.

This type of built-in structural inequality, whether it concerns hunger, poverty, housing, income or health, is part and parcel of a development process that is skewed by elite interests in India and at the World Bank and by the corporations that pull the strings at the World Trade Organisation, who have all succeeded in getting their 'globalisation' agenda accepted. No amount of philanthropy, regardless of how well meaning it may be, will remedy the overall destructive effects of the type of capitalism (and massive corruption) being embraced by India's economic and political leaders.

Originally from the northwest of England, Colin Todhunter has spent many years in India. He has written extensively for the Bangalore-based Deccan Herald, New Indian Express and Morning Star (Britain). His articles have also appeared in many other newspapers, journals and books. His East by Northwest site is at: East by Northwest

Dollar Billionaires in Poor Countries: India's "Philantrocapitalism" | Global Research

 

[Ray]

These are the ones who can open all doors in the country!

Great people!

 

[Vishwarupa]

Why is this not a election agenda? Why no one is talking about Black money in election rally?

I have not seen any one in BJP also talking except for AAP.

 

[LETHALFORCE]

Because this is all politicians money

 

[drkrn]

Why is this not a election agenda? Why no one is talking about Black money in election rally?

I have not seen any one in BJP also talking except for AAP.

because AAP is yet to amass money in swiss banks

 

[Decklander]

There is no money left in swiss banks. All the money has been shifted to other tax heavans and this process started in early 2010 when India was to sign the UN convention on black money. Sonia G made innumerable trips to swiss ro transfer her money and all her trips are well documented in SPG register.

 

[natarajan]

useless to post as no one bothers here and most of them here are conki fanboys

 

[LETHALFORCE]

Indian black money in Swiss banks more than 1,000 tonnes of Unnao's gold, says Modi


Read more at: http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/...anks-more-than-unnaos-gold-modi/1/317013.html

 

[LETHALFORCE]

Blackmoney: India to get secret tax info from Liechtenstein | Firstpost

 

[Ray]

As Marilyn Monroe sings - River of No Return!