NEW DELHI: The central government has handed over a list of 627 Indians holding illegal bank accounts abroad in a sealed cover to the Supreme Court. This comes a day after the apex court had rapped the government for withholding information on the black money case.

The court has set a deadline of March 31,2015 for the investigations to be completed. It will not divulge the names, leaving it to the SIT to establish the case and release the names after it has reached a conclusion.

Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi submitted three sets of lists with the 627 names of people stashing untaxed or black money to the apex court. Talking to reporters after the hearing, Rohatgi said, "The court after hearing the Centre's arguments did not open the cover but directed that the sealed covers should be given to the Special Investigation Team probing the case today itself."

Rohatgi said more than half of the people in the list are Indian nationals while the rest are Non-Resident Indians. He said that most people named in the list, which was last updated in 2006, have their accounts with the HSBC Bank.

The Supreme Court also directed the government to share the list with the Enforcement Directorate and the Central Bureau of Investigation. The case will be next heard on December 3 after the SIT submits its status report by November 30.

The first list submitted in the Supreme Court contains the details of treaties and agreements India has signed with Swtizerland and other nations where the illegal money is said to be stashed. The second list has all the names while the third list has a status report on the investigation in the case.

Earlier on Wednesday, Home Minister Rajnath Singh said the Centre is not interested in protecting anybody and will follow the court orders. "The government is not interested in protecting anybody. We will obey the court orders," Singh said.

Black money stashed in foreign accounts, and running a parallel economy in India, has agitated the Supreme Court sufficiently to harden its position and direct the Modi government to disclose all the names of foreign account holders under investigation.

A twist has been added to the case being heard by the apex court by a petition from Aam Aadmi Party chief Arvind Kejriwal adding ten names, including those of the two powerful Ambani brothers, to the list with information of the modus operandi used to hide black money as supplied to him “by a whistleblower.”

The Supreme Court that is clearly not happy with the Modi government’s role directed it to “Give to us all information you received from foreign countries and we will decide course of probe.”

The apex court made it clear that it was open for a CBI investigation into the entire issue. It directed the government not to do anything until it had submitted all the names to the court by Wednesday. It came down heavily on the centre for “holding a protecting umbrella for persons being investigated.”

The central government, in a volte face after assurances by no less a person than Prime Minister Narendra Modi during the Lok Sabha campaign of taking punitive action against black money operators, had raised eyebrows across the country by filing an application in the Supreme Court saying it cannot disclose details of the foreign accounts held by Indians as these are governed by bilateral double taxation avoidance treaties.

In the face of a national backlash the government has submitted eight names against whom it has initiated prosecution under the Income Tax Act for stashing black money in foreign banks. The list includes: Dabur India promoter Pradip Burman, bullion trader Pankaj Chamanlal Lodhiya, Goa mining company Timblo Private Ltd and five of its directors — Radha Satish Timblo, Chetan S Timblo, Rohan S Timblo, Anna C Timblo and Mallika R Timblo. The names were received from French authorities and other countries.

However, a new turn has been given to the entire proceedings by an application filed in the court in the same case of Ram Jethmalani versus the Union of India by Kejriwal maintaining that he is “in personal knowledge of some of the names, having black money stashed in their foreign bank accounts, and also in possession of the statements made by such three persons before Income Tax Authorities at the time of raids of their respective premises, wherein they had made confession about having black money in their foreign accounts and also disclosed the entire modus operandi as to how illegal gotten money are being transferred from India to their foreign accounts and further, how these money are being brought back through hawala transactions.

The aforesaid names/information, which have been given to the Applicant by a whistleblower, were made public by the Applicant through a press conference almost two years back and they are otherwise also very much in possession of the Income Tax Authorities, but they have still not been supplied to this Hon’ble Court.”

The application then formally discloses the names “supplied by the whistle blower” as

(i) Mukesh Dhirubhai Ambani

(ii) Anil Dhirubhai Ambani

(iii) Motech Software Private Ltd (Reliance Group company)

(iv) Reliance Industries Ltd

(v) Sandeep Tandon

(vi) Anu Tandon

(vii) Kokila Dhirubhai Ambani

(viii) Naresh Kumar Goyal

(ix) Burmans (3 family members)

(x) Yashovardhan Birla

The application urges that the government be asked by the court to take the following action:

(i) disclose the names of all such illicit foreign account holders;

(ii) confirm whether the persons above-named figure in the list which the Government has got of illicit foreign account holders;

(iii) obtain the bank statements of last ten years of all such illicit accounts from these account holders and investigate each of the transactions therein;

(iv) Complete investigations in all such cases in a time bound manner;

(v) Take strictest action against those who are guilty;

(vi) The statements made by the three individuals named above before the Income Tax Department shows that how easy it is to open a foreign bank account with illicit money, sitting at home in India and this is still going on, therefore,

a. The government should immediately stop this hawala route.

b. Initiate prosecution against the banks which have so far been involved in soliciting illicit money and transferring it abroad through hawala.

Given the hard position taken by the apex court, this case is going to be more than interesting. Advocate Ram Jethmalani who has been pursuing the black money issue for years has attacked the government despite being a member of the BJP for protecting the foreign account holders, with the Kejriwal application providing new significant evidence before the courts.

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