612 Indians including 2 MPs have shell companies in tax havens: report

International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), in collaboration with 38 media organisations across the world, including Indian Express, has revealed that there are 612 Indians who have shell companies in tax havens.

The list includes two MPs - Kingfisher group owner Vijay Mallya and Congress MP Vivekananda Gaddam.

 

The list includes several industrialists such as Ravikant Ruia, Samir Modi, Chetan Burman, Abhey Kumar Oswal, Rahul Mammen Mappillai, Teja Raju, Saurabh Mittal and Vinod Doshi. 

The list also includes businessmen who have had a brush with authorities such as the Income-Tax department and the CBI. Several of the offshore investments were made in possible violation of RBI and FEMA rules. 

Details of these transactions were contained in 2.5 million secret files and accounted for more than 260 gigabytes of data, an Indian Express report said. 

The secret files provide facts and figures — cash transfers, incorporation dates, links between companies and individuals — that illustrate how financial secrecy has spread aggressively around the globe. They represent the biggest stockpile of inside information about the offshore system ever obtained by a media organisation. 

Besides several well-known Indians, the lists include American doctors and dentists, middle-class Greek villagers as well as families and associates of long-time despots, Wall Street swindlers, East European and Indonesian billionaires, Russian corporate executives and international arms dealers.(India Tv)