Centre spells out steps to monitor black money probe

It submitted that a 10-member high-power committee comprising the chiefs of the Enforcement Directorate (ED), the Intelligence Bureau (IB) and the CBI and top bureaucrats of different ministries has been constituted.

The Centre took the stand in March during the hearing on a PIL filed by eminent jurist Ram Jethmalani seeking direction for recalling black money stashed away in foreign banks.
The CBI is probing the security aspect while the ED is focusing on money laundering and the RBI is looking into the money stashed away in foreign countries, it had claimed.

In one of the hearings on April 25, the Central government’s law officer had said that different agencies were probing 36 cases relating to black money while an agreement with 26 countries has been made to forfeit the black money parked by a few individuals.

Notably, a Bench of Justices B Sudarshan Reddy (since retired) and S S Nijjar had in July renamed the high-level committee formed by the Centre on May 27 to look into the issue of black money as SIT and directed for the appointment of former apex court judges Justices B P Jeevan Reddy and M B Shah as its chairman and vice-chairman respectively.

However, the Centre challenged that order by maintaining that the court has impinged upon the domain entrusted to the executive in the order which is “contrary to the settled legal principle that the function of the court is to see that the lawful authority is duly exercised by the executive but not to take over itself the task entrusted to the executive.”

The petitioners, on their part, had opposed the Centre’s plea saying that it could file review petition and would not seek recall of the order.