Agencies probing 10,000 leads on suspicious overseas transactions: Pranab Mukherjee

Income-tax and financial intelligence units are probing nearly 10,000 pieces of information about suspicious transactions entered into by Indians in overseas deals, besides more than 30,000 suspicious domestic transactions. Revealing this, finance minister Pranab Mukherjee also told the economic editors conference that the directorate of transfer pricing had detected mispricing of Rs34,145 crore in the last two financial years, preventing the outflow of such large sums to overseas jurisdictions.

He said the investigation wing of the CBDT had detected concealed income to the tune of Rs18,750 crore in the last two financial years.

The United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government has been under fire for not doing enough to bring back black money stashed in foreign banks by Indians over the years. At a time when many countries, including the US, have forced Swiss banks to divulge information about the illegal accounts maintained by their nationals, the Indian government has been seen to be reluctant to make any such demands.

Mukherjee, however, denied that his government was slow to move on this front. He said the government had received information from France about Rs400 crore of unaccounted money lying in 69 overseas accounts of Indians. The government had already recovered Rs30 crore in taxes from these accounts, he added.

India, which has signed a double taxation avoidance agreement (DTAA) with France, had been able to extract information relating to the bank accounts maintained by Indians there, he said.
The government has also made 333 requests with authorities abroad, seeking information about the black money stashed by Indians.
 
During the first five months of the current fiscal, concealed income worth Rs3,014 crore had been detected following searches by the I-T officials. Similarly, investigations have resulted in the recovery of Rs18,750 crore in concealed income, added Mukherjee.

The revised tax treaty with Switzerland will help improve the inflow of banking information to India, he said. The DTAA will also allow India get information from Switzerland in specific cases from April 2011.

India, he said, was also planning to update the existing DTA convention with Mauritius in line with international practices, enabling it to curb treaty shopping by corporates here. India had thus been successful in creating an environment where regular flow of banking information has started.

Mukhrejee, who was in Paris recently for the G20 finance ministers and central bank governors' meeting, had urged France to pressurise tax havens to share past banking information. He had asked France to back India's stand that international standards for transparency and exchange of information are applied to past information, including banking information.