Govt gets cracking on foreign bank accounts

In an extensive exercise to track overseas bank accounts of Indians and round-tripping of funds, top investigating agencies in the country are gathering actionable intelligence on chartered accountants, brokers, legal firms and professionals involved in these areas.

A senior government official said that actionable intelligence was being collected by monitoring the professionals and agencies dealing in these areas and also through physical search and seizure by the Income Tax Department, Enforcement Directorate, Central Bureau of Investigation and local police.

These include certain known CAs, brokers and legal firms in the business of arranging cross-border parking of funds, including creation of tax haven companies and opening bank accounts.

"They are potentially a good source for zeroing in on actual account holders," he added.

Further, there are fund operators and managers who also do the services for a fee. The official said inquiries were underway on a foreign bank operating in India in this connection.

It is suspected that in the guise of investment banking, the bank is soliciting accounts overseas from Indian investors. The number of employees in this arm was far in excess of the services being given, said the official.

Another area of intermediaries on the radar are professionals providing services associated with round-tripping.

These professionals arrange  bringing back the funds parked overseas as legal investments such as debt in the form of Foreign Currency Convertible Bonds, Global Depository Receipts, American Depository Receipts and external borrowing.

The traffic to websites of known intermediaries, as well as tax haven bank accounts, are also being zeroed on after monitoring IPDRs obtained from internet gateways.

The official said persons controlling and operating cross-border accounts could withdraw money in India from any ATM or make other transactions such as purchases and hotels. For this, their credit cards are authenticated by known payment gateways such as Visa, Mastercard, Amex and JCB.

"Efforts to gather information with regard to those credit and debit cards based in Switzerland and other tax havens whose annual expenses are in excess of Rs 10,00,000 are underway," said the official.

This will help narrow in on Indian account holders. The payment gateways, however, are hesitating in providing this information and may need some persuasion through the Reserve Bank of India and finance ministry.

The official said market intelligence suggested that in the last one year or so, the popularity of Swiss accounts had declined rapidly and most operators were using Dubai for operating in medium-sized funds and Singapore for large funds.

I-T department has obtained intelligence relating to the operators and this has been taken up for interception and surveillance and further action.