Bilateral meetings with tax havens to deal with black money issue: Ministry of Finance

By NewsGram Staff Writer

Ministry of Finance has decided that a team of senior officials will hold bilateral meetings with foreign jurisdictions to quicken the recovery of black money. The ministry took this decision after consulting with the Special Investigation Team set up to investigate on the black money issue.

A senior official of the Finance Ministry told PTI, "The step is aimed to cut down on the time taken in paper-based documentation and communication in cases of illegal funds stashed abroad."

"A team of senior officials drawn from the Ministry and its various field formations will hold meetings and put across requests related to probe in these cases right on the discussion table. The required sanctions in this regard have been obtained from the government," he added.

PTI reported that a note prepared by the Central Board of Direct Taxes stated, "These bilateral meetings will help India in making targeted and specific requests for information and to understand the problems, if any, which prevent them in providing the information, and to examine how the same can be addressed."

Reportedly, three such meetings have already taken place and about half-a-dozen more are lined up this year, including one with the European Union.

According to PTI, as a part of the measures to deal with the black money issue, investigators have also received a new dossier on tax-related business information on about a dozen entities whose names were reported by an international group of investigative journalists sometime back.