The Supreme Court on July 5 appointed a 13-member special investigation team (SIT) headed by a former judge of the court, with wide powers to help recover unaccounted-for money stashed in foreign bank accounts. The court assailed the government’s efforts in the matter so far, denouncing it as a failure that goes “to the very heart of constitutional imperatives of governance”.
“Unaccounted monies, especially large sums held by nationals and entities with a legal presence in the nation, in banks abroad, especially in tax havens or in jurisdictions with a known history of silence about sources of monies, clearly indicate a compromise of the ability of the state to manage its affairs in consonance with what is required from a constitutional perspective,” observed the Bench of Justices B Sudershan Reddy and S S Nijjar.