New Delhi: The Supreme Court will hear a petition that seeks a thorough investigation into Indian offshore accounts as revealed by the Panama papers leak. The petition is seeking a CBI probe into more than 500 such accounts.
The petition was filed as a public interest litigation by a Supreme Court advocate Manohar Lal Sharma, who had sought the apex court’s direction to the investigative agency to examine the case under the provisions of the Prevention of Corruption Act and the Prevention of Money Laundering Act.
The Union Government has meanwhile informed the court that it has set up a multi-agency group to investigate the Indian accounts mentioned in the papers. The group has investigated 424 people and prepared 6 reports. The apex court has asked the court to file these reports with it in the next four weeks.
The Panama Papers pertains to a cache of over 10 million documents detailing the offshore holdings of politicians, celebrities and sports stars from all over the world. These holdings were created by a Panama-registered firm called Mossack Fonsecka and specialized in creating shell companies to route money through offshore tax havens.
A German paper called Suddeutsche Zeitung was offered the cache by an anonymous source. The paper coordinated with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists in publishing the data with reporters and media outlets worldwide last year.
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