Big B among 500 Indians with offshore firm links
mumbai — Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan and his daughter in law Aishwarya, and some top businessmen are among the 500 Indians whose names figure in the leaked papers of Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca.
The Indian Express conducted the probe into the names of 500 Indians who are said to have opened offshore accounts through the Panamanian law firm.
The paper said it conducted an investigation of the 36,000 files that relate to 500 Indians having links to the law firm. The prominent names revealed by the paper include Amitabh and Aishwarya; K.P. Singh of the DLF group; Onkar Kanwar of Apollo Tyres; Harish Salve, a leading lawyer; Anil Salgaocar of the Goa-based business group; Mohan Lal Lohia of IndoRama Synthetics; the Garware family; Shishir K. Bajoria of the Bajoria group; Zavaray Poonawalla of the Poonwalla group; the late Indira Sivasailam of the Amalgamations Group and her daughter Mallika Srinivasan.
Amitabh Bachchan, who is prolific on Twitter, has not tweeted any messages after he congratulated West Indies for their T20 victory. He has also not responded to media queries on his name figuring on the list. Aishwarya’s media advisor pooh-poohed the report by the paper.
Lawyer Salve, for instance, said all his offshore assets up to 2014 were created out of funds remitted from his Indian bank to his UK bank account.
K.P. Singh of DLF, who responded on behalf of his family, said resident Indians have been allowed by the Reserve Bank of India, under its liberalised remittance scheme, started in 2004, to open a bank account abroad and remit funds. .
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has ordered the setting up of a multi-agency group to examine the setting up of overseas business entities by about 500 Indians.
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said that the group would monitor these accounts and whichever ones are found to be unlawful, strict action would be taken.
“I welcome this investigation,” he said of the probe into the Panama papers. “I think it is a healthy step that these kind of exposes are being made. I have been repeatedly saying that the world is now going to increasingly become more transparent, countries are cooperating with each other and slowly all this information is going to come out.”