Star quizzed on tax evasion scheme
ACTRESS Aishwarya Rai-Bachchan was quizzed for more than five hours on Monday by officials from the Enforcement Directorate (ED) at its Jam Nagar office in New Delhi in connection with the Panama Papers exposé. She was questioned on allegations of violating the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA).
The exposé showed that several prominent personalities in India had floated companies in tax havens.
A team of six officals, including a woman official, recorded her statement.
A source said that Rai-Bachchan was asked as many as 50 questions regarding a firm reportedly incorporated by her father-in-law and Bollywood icon Amitabh Bachchan. The firm was incorporated in the British Virgin Islands.
Rai-Bachchan was first the director of the firm, and then became a shareholder.
This was the third time that the actress had been summonsed by the ED. However, she didn’t join the probe on the earlier occasions.
“We had summonsed her for December 20. Abiding by the third summons, she joined the probe,” said an ED official.
The ED lodged a case under FEMA after the Panama Papers leak showed how companies were set up in offshore islands to avoid taxes. Rai-Bachchan and others were named in the case.
In 2016, the Panama Papers leak case came to light in which Rai-Bachchan and the Bachchan family members were named. The names of her father-in-law, Amitabh, and husband, Abhishek, also cropped up in the case.
Amitabh Bachchan was accused of incorporating four shell companies in May 2005 in the British Virgin Islands.
Abhishek Bachchan and Rai-Bachchan were directors of the separate firms. Later, Rai-Bachchan was made a shareholder of a company. In 2008 the companies became inactive.
Later, after her name cropped up in the Panama Papers leak, a special investigating team was formed to probe the matter.
According to the indianexpress.com, Rai-Bachchan had also been questioned on her foreign travels since Panama Papers records showed that she, along with family members, attended a meeting of the Board of Directors of a British Virgin Islands (BVI) company, Amic Partners Limited, in Dubai in June 2005, the year the company was incorporated.
“She is also being questioned on a large deposit made to a foreign bank account of her husband, Abhishek Bachchan, using the Liberalised Remittance Scheme (LRS),” said the website.
“It is understood that Rai has denied any knowledge of the BVI company, and told ED investigators that it was her father, the late Krishna Raj Rai, who handled all her financial matters,” reported indianexpress.com.
What is the Panama Papers leak case?
In this case, legal documents of a company named Mossack Fonseca were leaked. This data was released by a German newspaper, Suddeutsche Zeitung, under the name of Panama Papers on April 3, 2016.
Celebrities, businessmen and famous personalities from dozens of countries, including India, were named in the papers. They were accused of money laundering. The data from the years between 1977 and 2015 was given in the Panama Papers.
It had around 500 Indian names, including Amitabh Bachchan, Aishwarya Rai-Bachchan, Ajay Devgn and Vijay Mallya. Underworld don Iqbal Mirchi’s name was also mentioned in the papers.
The matter had reached the apex court and later the government of India had formed a Multi-Agency Group (MAG) to look into the matter. The Central Board of Direct Taxes, Government of India, Reserve Bank of India, ED and the Financial Intelligence Unit were asked to look into the entire matter.
The Panama Papers shared details of those who formed shell companies to evade huge taxes.