BJP favours law to tackle problem of blackmoney

New Delhi, Feb 22 (PTI) Pitching for concrete actionto tackle the problem of black money stashed abroad, the BJPtoday favoured a law to bring the culprits to book and saidany offer for amnesty for tax evaders needs to be debated.

"I feel it is possible for us to take action againstpeople who are known as tax evaders in the public domain.

Certain names have been with the government for the last threeyears, if the Ministry of Finance had the documents then whywas no action taken," BJP spokesperson Nirmala Sitharaman saidduring an interaction at the Indian Women''s Press Corps here.

Accusing the government of being in a state of"slumber", she said, "Political will is needed to take actionagainst fraudulent things.

"The UPA is not interested in talking about it. Wewill in the current session talk about money laundering. Wewill make sure a lot of cases are filed.""There needs to be a law to tackle this problem,"Sitharaman said.

Asserting that amnesty being offered to tax evadersneeds to be debated, she said, "This (black money) is not taxevasion. It can also be money made through drug deals".

Lawyer Prashant Bhushan said that an important part ofthe problem was the double taxation benefit given to companiesregistered in Mauritius.

"Black money is the economy which has been generatedby a lot of resources of this country," he said.

Around 90 per cent of this money has gone tocorporates and around 10 per cent to public servants, healleged.

He favoured India ratifying the UN convention againstcorruption to tackle the issue.