The Finance Minister said all of the accounts holders may not be illegal as some had disclosed their overseas business dealings to tax authorities while some others on the list were NRIs. Names, he said, are immaterial if they are not backed by evidence. "Evidence in addition to stolen data so that a water-tight case can be framed.
Just names do not ensure proper proceedings in the court. It should be rather backed by solid evidence." If evidence is authentic, then only it stands in the court, he said. The official statement said some of the names figure in today's list have already come in the earlier list available with the government.
"Necessary investigations as per the provisions of the law will be taken up in all the new cases expeditiously," it said. Jaitley said that the tax department has launched 60 prosecutions from an earlier list of Indian account holders in a Swiss branch of HSBC bank and most of the names revealed in today's list are known to the government.
The minister said that he had met top Swiss authorities, including Switzerland's Finance Minister, in Davos last month and it was agreed there that admission by assesses would be considered additional evidence to seek details.
The Indian names revealed today are part of a global list of account holders in HSBC's Swiss private banking arm and their balances for the year 2006-07. They include persons from over 200 countries with total balance of over USD 100 billion.
The government has launched prosecution against as many as 60 illegal overseas bank account holders, while penalty proceedings against 350 other account holders have been initiated, Jaitley said.
Apart from these accounts, Jaitley said, the revenue department is in touch with the informants for more names. "In the last 7-8 months, there has been vigorous efforts on this and in this effort there are three aspects. We have identified many names.
In some cases, which are quite general in nature, where verification of address and details are difficult so the process is on," he said. Jaitley said that out of 628 account holders named in the previous HSBC list, assessment in case of about 350 has been completed and the process of imposing penalty has been initiated.
"Remaining assessment would be completed by March 31, 2015," he said, while adding that legal action would be taken against law violators.
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