Wait not long to get black money back: Jaitley

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley Friday said Prime Minister Narendra Modi government was moving fast on bringing back the ill-gotten money stashed away by Indians in tax havens abroad.

"I can assure that you don't have to wait for long to see that we have brought back the black money," the finance minister said in the Lok Sabha during his reply to the debate on the national budget, which was later passed by a voice vote.

"Our government has formed a Special Investigating Team (SIT)," he said, adding: "If the SIT wants to take steps, the government will give full cooperation. Whatever information we are getting, we are giving that to Supreme Court as well."

He said the issue of black money - for which there is no official estimate, but only independent studies that value it at between $462 billion and $1.4 trillion - was a concern for the whole country and all agencies must do their bit to get it back.

"There is no need for getting into jurisdiction battle whether it is a court matter or our matter," he said.

In an answer to a query in the house earlier this week, Jaitley said evidence on black money will come only with the cooperation of countries where the accounts are kept and that the Indian government was alerted about them by the French government.

"They had got a list of names of people who have accounts in the Swiss bank. This data didn't reach the French government through any official route. This data was taken by someone from the HSBC Bank and handed over to the French government," he said.

--Indop-Asian News Service

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