Panama Papers: Multi agency group holds first meeting

New Delhi: The Multi Agency Group (MAG) set up to probe the 'Panama Papers' on Thursday held its first meeting here and chalked out an action plan including approaching tax haven Panama, global economic bodies and the journalist consortium that did the expose for obtaining documents.

The meeting deliberated on the inputs relating to Indians whose names have figured in the expose on offshore entities allegedly floated by individuals and corporates.

The top brass of the Central Board of Direct Taxes and representatives of the FIU, RBI and Foreign Tax and Tax Research (FT and TR) participated in the meeting held in the Finance Ministry here.

Official sources said a plan of action was charted by the agencies today as part of which the Financial Intelligence Unit and the Income Tax department and FT and TR (under CBDT) will approach the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and Panama to obtain more details on the Indian perspective.

The panel, sources said, will also approach global economic bodies like the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and Financial Action Task Force (FATF) to not only obtain help in clamping overseas tax evasion but also ensuring global cooperation in this regard.

"As the Panama disclosures involve multiple nations, the member-countries of these two global bodies will have to strengthen their cooperation. The multi-agency group will also seek to obtain cooperation from Panamanian authorities vis-a-vis Indian names," they said.