BeyondHeadlines Special Correspondent
Pune: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has summoned India’s supposedly biggest tax evader Hasan Ali’s chartered accountant Sunil Shinde. Shinde will appear before the ED today.
Pune-based stud farm owner Hasan Ali Khan, arrested by Enforcement Directorate in connection with massive money laundering and tax evasion, being produced in the sessions court in Mumbai.
Yesterday, the ED conducted raids at the residence of Shinde, in Pune. Shinde has been Hasan Ali’s accountant since 2007.
Ali is believed to have 8 billion dollars in black money in foreign bank accounts. He was arrested earlier this month and moved to Mumbai from Pune, where he is known for his lavish cars, homes, horses and parties.
He has been asked to pay Rs. 70,000 crore as a penalty for tax evasion. His lawyer claims that Ali is innocent of all the charges against him.
The Supreme Court had last week cancelled his bail. He is currently in ED’s custody. The court had earlier suggested that Ali be tried on terror charges because his activities seemed to involve a threat to “national security.”
The Supreme Court has referred repeatedly to the government’s inaction against Ali in the context of a case that it is hearing on black money. The Public Interest Litigation (PIL) filed by former Law Minister Ram Jethmalani among others asks the government to recover crores of unaccounted-for money that has been stashed in foreign banks by Indians.
