Tracking blackmoney: I-T department to file 100 more complaints in court

New Delhi, Feb 22: The Income Tax department is set to launch over 100 fresh prosecution complaints for "wilful" evasion of taxes against those entities and individuals whose names have figured in the HSBC, Geneva black money bank accounts list.

The department, according to sources, is also expected to collect an additional revenue to the tune of Rs 3,200 crore after completing final assessments and prosecutions of these cases, as taxes and penalties.

Officials said the taxman will file prosecution complaints, which means pressing of tax evasion charges against the guilty in a court at the end of investigations, under Section 276C(1) of I-T Act (wilful attempt to evade tax, penalty or interest chargeable) and Section 276D (failure to produce accounts and documents).

"Some 100 or more prosecution cases would be filed by the tax department before March 31 in the HSBC bank Geneva branch black money cases. Already, about 60 such complaints have been filed till now," a source privy to the development said.

An additional revenue of about Rs 3,200 crore would also be collected by the department, taking the total amount of income brought to tax after investigations in these case to about Rs 7,000 crore, the sources said.

Taxes or revenue to the tune of Rs 3,150 crore have been collected till now. The I-T department, currently, is working on to probe about 240 HSBC cases where it is suspected that Indians have stashed their illicit funds abroad.

Till December 31 last year, assessments were completed in 128 of these cases by the I-T department out of the total 628 Indian names or entities reported on the stolen HSBC list provided by France to India few years ago after they were reportedly "secreted" out by an employee posted at the Geneva branch of the global bank.

Out of the said 628 people, 200 were either non-residents or non-traceable, leaving 428 cases to be actionable for tax sleuths to probe.

For these 428 actionable cases, the government had said, the net amount of peak balance was about Rs 4,500 crore. The I-T is fast tracking these cases, sources said, as the "time barring" limit for them is March 31 as after this deadline no legal action can be taken.

PTI