Vijay Mallya among 612 Indians who stashed cash in tax havens

Vijay Mallya among 612 Indians who stashed cash in tax havensAt least 612 Indians, including Lok Sabha member Vivekanand Gaddam and Kingfisher-promoter Vijay Mallya, have stashed huge amounts of money in secretive tax havens, a global journalistic investigation exposed.

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and its partner media houses conducted a detailed investigation into secretive tax haven users, and found that as many as 120,000 companies and nearly 130,000 individuals from around the globe are registered with different secretive tax havens.

Apart from industrialists and politicians, senior government officials and professionals from various countries like Azerbaijan, Canada, India, Russia, Pakistan, Mongolia and the Philippines.

The list of Indians, who were exposed by the investigation, includes industrialists like Vijay Mallya, Ravikant Ruia, Abhey Kumar Oswal, Samir Modi, Chetan Burman, Rahul Mammen Mappillai, Sonu Lalchand Mirchandani, Saurabh Mittal, Vinod Doshi and Teja Raju - son of disgraced Satyam founder Ramalinga Raju.

While Ruia and Mallya claimed that they are NRIs, industrialists like Mirchandani and Teja Raju denied opening accounts in any tax havens.

In France, President Francois Hollande's campaign co-treasurer Jean-Jacques Augier has admitted that he has a secret accounts in Cayman Islands; while the government of Greece has started a probe into the details of secret accounts held by its residents.