Eminent jurist Ram Jethmalani on Tuesday told the Supreme Court the present NDA government, like the previous regime, had played fraud with the people on the issue of bringing back black money.
This, even as a Special Investigation Team (SIT) said Rs 6,400 crore black money was found stashed in a French branch of HSBC.
In a hard-hitting submission before a special bench presided over by Chief Justice of India Justice H L Dattu, the 91-year-old senior advocate, a petitioner in the case, went on to blast Prime Minister Narendra Modi, BJP president Amit Shah and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on the issue.
Meanwhile, the SIT, in its third report on black money, revealed statistics of both domestic and foreign income unearthed in investigations conducted by enforcement agencies.
In a report submitted before the bench, the SIT said the Central Board of Direct Taxes had detected unaccounted-for income to the tune of Rs 7,078 crore during 2013-14, and again stumbled upon Rs 4,456.96 crore for the period of 2014 to February 2015.
Opening arguments, Jethmalani accused the current government of not taking any effective step to bring back the black money, much like the previous government, which had “played a trick” by signing the UN Convention on Corruption without ratifying it.
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