Panama Papers leak: Nearly 2,000 Indian individuals linked, claims new ICIJ data

Pic courtesy: panamapapers.icij.org

New Delhi: The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) on Monday published online detailed data of Panama Papers, which has thousands of documents related to India linking close to 2,000 individuals, entities and addresses from the country.

A random check of the database for India displays about 22 offshore entities, 1,046 officers or individual links, 42 intermediaries and as many as 828 addresses within the country ranging from the tony and posh locations of metropolitan cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai to mofussil locations like that in Haryana's Sirsa, Bihar's Muzaffarpur and Madhya Pradesh's Mandasaur and state capital Bhopal.

India, taking note of over 500 entities figuring during the release of the first set of names last month, had created a Multi-Agency Group (MAG) comprising officers from various central investigative agencies like the Income Tax department, FIU, RBI and Foreign Tax and Tax Research (FT and TR) under the Central Board of Direct Taxes apart from the Special Investigation Team (SIT) on black money reviewing the probe in these cases.

The data released doesn't mention the personal details, bank accounts, email exchanges and financial transactions. It gives the name of the person, local address and the off-shore entities.

However, the data only gives the name of the individual, the local registered address, the off-shore entities either incorporated or of which they are a part of along with the country. Personal details like bank accounts have not been disclosed.

The new data that ICIJ is now making public represents a fraction of the Panama Papers, a trove of more than 11.5 million leaked files from the Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca, one of the world’s top creators of hard-to-trace companies, trusts and foundations.

(With inputs from ICIJ)