New Delhi [India], August 14 (ANI): Bharatiya Janata Party MP Nishikant Dubey on Thursday urged the Centre to take action regarding the Panama Papers and Paradise Papers cases and 'expose the faces hidden behind the mask.'

'British Prime Minister Cameron accepted that what is written in the Panama Papers is true. Indian Government should take action through @IncomeTaxIndia and @dir_ed (Enforcement Directorate) regarding Panama Papers and Paradise Papers and expose the faces hidden behind the mask,' Dubey said in a post on X.

https://x.com/nishikant_dubey/status/1955808217826766859

The Panama Papers pertain to leaked documents that point towards fraud and tax evasion by many individuals and corporate entities across the world.

This data was released by a German newspaper, 'Suddeutsche Zeitung', under the title of 'Panama Papers' on 3rd April 2016.

It had around 500 Indian names, including several Bollywood personalities such as Amitabh Bachchan, his daughter-in-law Aishwarya Rai, actor Ajay Devgn, and businessman Vijay Mallya.

All these people were accused of tax fraud. After the name surfaced in this case, Amitabh had said that he had sent money abroad only under Indian rules. He also denied having any affiliation with the companies that appeared in the Panama Papers.

The 'Paradise Papers' leak, dubbed as the second largest data leak in history after Panama Papers, claims that some 714 Indians allegedly have offshore accounts in tax havens, landing India in the 19th rank out of 180 countries in terms of the number of names in the data.

Paradise Papers include nearly seven million loan agreements, financial statements, emails, trust deeds and other paperwork over nearly 50 years from inside Appleby, a prestigious offshore law firm with offices in Bermuda and beyond.

The leaked documents include files from the smaller, family-owned trust company, Asiaciti (Singapore), and from company registries in 19 secrecy jurisdictions.

In 2017, then Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had said that the investigation into the Paradise Papers leak would be done on the lines of the Panama Papers probe.

In 2021, the Enforcement Directorate had questioned Bollywood actor Aishwarya Rai Bachchan for nearly 5 hours in the Panama Papers leak case.

The ED had recorded the statement of the actor in the case over allegations of stashing wealth abroad under the Foreign Exchange Management Act, 1999. She had earlier submitted records on the foreign payments under investigation.

The ED had issued notices to the Bachchan family asking them to explain their foreign remittances since 2004 under the Liberalised Remittance Scheme (LRS) of the Reserve Bank of India. (ANI)