Tax treaty with Germany stumbling block in black money case: FM - Times of India

The author has posted comments on this articleTNN | Oct 18, 2014, 04.06AM IST

NEW DELHI: Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said on Friday that the tax treaty signed by the Congress government with Germany in 1995 is a stumbling block in unveiling details of black money held overseas.

Jaitley said the Narendra Modi administration is not trying to hold back information or names of individuals who have stashed black money in foreign banks and has been relentlessly pursuing the issue.

"Is the present NDA government led by Modi in any way reluctant to make some names public? Certainly not. We have no difficulty in making names public. But they can be made public only in accordance with due process of law.

"And the due process of law has been constrained by DTAA (Double Taxation Avoidance Agreement) which was entered into between India and Germany when the Congress Party was in power on June 19, 1995," the FM told reporters.

Jaitley was reacting to the Congress charge that the BJP government was dragging its feet on revealing details on the black money issue.

"This is not only a hiatus between the words and deeds of BJP, but sheer hypocrisy and dishonesty with the public of India. Modi government's functioning is defined in the hiatus between speech and reality and action and words.

"One wonders whether his black money rhetoric was meant for pre-election audience," Congress spokesman Abhishek Singhvi told reporters.

The BJP had promised to bring back black money stashed in foreign banks in the lead up to the 2014 general elections but followed the previous government's line on the issue of revealing names. This attracted criticism from opposition parties whi ch accused the government of being lax on the issue and deliberately withholding the names.

The Modi government has undertaken several measures in its fight against black money and set up a special investigation team to probe the issue. Officials have said any information sought by the SIT would be provided in a sealed cover and nothing was being held back from the investigators.

"The names can only be made public once after investigation, there are disclosures made to court, that is when charges are filed. Till such time when the investigations are on, merely for reasons of propaganda they can't be made public," Jaitley said.

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