House panel asks govt to act on black money

New Delhi: Members of a Parliamentary panel on Friday asked the government to expeditiously commence the prosecution proceedings against the persons whose names figure in such information provided by France and other countries. "The (Standing Committee on Finance) members felt that the Income Tax Department should launch prosecution as quickly as possible against the guilty so that their names could come out in the public domain," sources said.     A meeting of the committee headed by senior BJP leader and former Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha took place on Friday.  The Income Tax Department is already probing a list of 700 Indians having accounts with banks in Geneva after the government received information in this regard, reportedly from the French government. However, the government has not disclosed the names of persons who were being probed by the Income Tax Department in connection with stashing of unaccounted wealth in overseas bank accounts. The Finance Ministry officials, sources said, explained to the committee that under the international tax treaties, the government can only disclose the names of the persons at the time of filing of prosecution proceedings. There has been a public outcry over the black money issue after it was taken up by social activists like Anna Hazare and Ramdev. BJP leader L K Advani too had asked the government to disclose the names of 700 Indians who have accounts in Swiss banks.