The Government has enacted a comprehensive and a more stringent new law, namely, the Black Money (Undisclosed Foreign Income and Assets) and Imposition of Tax Act, 2015 that has come into force w.e.f. 01.07.2015. Apart from prescribing more stringent penal consequences, this law has included the offence of willful attempt to evade tax etc. in relation to undisclosed foreign income/assets as a Scheduled Offence under the Prevention of Money-laundering Act, 2002 (PMLA). Money laundering is concealing or disguising the identity of illegally obtained proceeds so that they appear to have originated from legitimate sources. It is frequently a component of other, much more serious, crimes such as drug trafficking, robbery or extortion.
The Government has taken pro-active and effective steps whenever any credible information has been received with regard to black money stashed abroad, whether in HSBC cases, ICIJ cases, Paradise Papers or Panama Papers.
These steps include constitution of Multi Agency Group in relevant cases, calling for definitive information from foreign jurisdictions, bringing the black money to tax under relevant law launching prosecutions against the offenders etc. India has been a leading force in the efforts to forge a multi-lateral regime for proactive sharing of Financial Information known as Automatic Exchange of Information (AEOI) which will greatly assist the global efforts to combat tax evasion. The AEOI based on Common Reporting Standard (CRS) has commenced from 2017 enabling India to receive financial account information of Indian residents in other countries.
India has also entered into information sharing agreement with the USA under the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) of USA. The exchanges under FATCA have taken place for the financial years 2014, 2015 and 2016.
Indian Government has been proactively engaging with foreign governments, for exchange of information under Double Taxation Avoidance Agreements (DTAAs)/Tax Information Exchange Agreements (TIEAs)/Multilateral Convention on Mutual Administrative Assistance in Tax Matters/South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) Multilateral Agreement. Thus, Action against black money is an on-going process.
Such actions include policy-level initiatives, effective enforcement action on the ground, putting in place robust legislative and administrative frameworks, systems and processes with due focus on capacity building and integration and mining of information through increasing use of information technology.
Q. 'Opportunity of being heard' is a cardinal Principle of Natural Justice and the authority is to take into account all relevant materials placed on record by the parties concerned before him. Dr.Manickam purchased property out of unexplained income.
Enforcement Authority established the crime of money laundering. However fails to give hearing to Dr.Manickam. Based on the essence of the passage and given principle of law, decide the validity of proceeding against Dr.Manickam.