‘Off shore investments legal’

SHILLONG: Four city-based businessmen — E C Kharsyntiew, Less Shylla, Bokstar Kurkalang, and Philip Pala whose names figured in the Panama papers — on Tuesday said that their offshore investments were legal.
In response to a news report in this regard, Advocate SP Sharma on behalf of the four city residents said that they have every right to invest money any where they wish either in Meghalaya/other State or abroad as per prevalent law of the country and accordingly they had invested in shares of the offshore companies.
“This was with a view to avail the opportunities given by the Reserve Bank of India and to derive higher returns in the long run under the Liberalised Remittance Scheme (LRS) thereby permitting the Indian  residents to invest funds outside India”, the statement said, while adding that as such the investment was made in accordance with the general permission given by RBI, under the LRS.
The entire payments were made strictly through the Indian banking channels with due permission of the RBI  as applicable and have full knowledge and information about the investment”, the statement said.      The city residents also took exception to leveling them as benami and conduits to channel money, subsidies and others. They said that that the Indian tax authorities are already investigating all the cases  throughout India and they too are fully responding to the queries made by the  authorities as r applicable which is exhaustive and covering all aspects of such investment.
According to the businessmen, the International, Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) responsible for publishing such news has also categorically mentioned that several such transfers from India are legitimate as per Government norms and regulations and should not be construed that everyone in India has broken the laws.
They further said that the issue is at the hands of the government agencies and they  had already started the probing on each aspect of all cases in India.
According to the city based businessmen, the Union Finance Minister and Governor of RBI had clearly mentioned  that all such cases cannot be gauged with the same yardstick and the goodwill and  respect of bonafide citizens of India should not be maligned without knowing the facts of  the case.