More than 300 Indians, including cricketing legend Sachin Tendulkar and businessman Anil Ambani, are named within the recently released Pandora Papers, Indian media outlets reported on Sunday.
The Indian Express, which is a component of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists’ (ICIJ) collaborative research, said the names of fugitive diamond tycoon Nirav Modi’s sister and pharma billionaire Kiran Mazumdar Shaw’s husband also are included.
Of the 300-plus Indians included within the papers, the offshore holdings of 60 individuals and corporations were investigated, the report said, adding that the small print would be revealed within the coming days.
It noted that a lot of Indians, including Tendulkar, re-organised their offshore assets following the 2016 Panama Papers investigation. “Evidently, Indian businessmen are fixing a plethora of offshore trusts to project a degree of separation from their wealth and insulate their assets from creditors,” it further said.
“Individuals accused in economic offences and under investigation, have created an offshore network in tax havens like Samoa, Belize or the Cook Islands, besides larger tax havens just like the British Virgin Islands or Panama,” the report said.
The list of names also includes people currently in jail, former lawmakers, a former tax commissioner, a former military officer of senior rank and a former lawman .
Read: what’s the Pandora Papers?
Tendulkar
The Pandora Papers show that Sachin Tendulkar, his wife Anjali Tendulkar and father-in-law Anand Mehta were the beneficial owners of an offshore company within the British Virgin Islands .
The company, Saas International Limited, was liquidated in 2016 following the Panama Papers expose, the report said. It remained operational from 2012 to 2016 when Tendulkar was a member of the Indian parliament.
Saas International Limited was liquidated three months after the Panama Papers investigation was made public. consistent with The Indian Express, “the average buyback price of shares of Saas International Limited is around $96,000. And as a resolution of the corporate dated August 10, 2007 (the day the corporate was formed) shows, 90 shares of the corporate were issued at the outset.
“Anjali Tendulkar got the primary share certificate with 60 shares; her father got the second share certificate with 30 shares. While there are not any details of buyback of the remaining shares, the worth of 90 shares are often pegged at $8.6 million.”
Meanwhile, CEO and Director of the Sachin Tendulkar Foundation, Mrinmoy Mukherjee, told the Indian publication that the previous cricketer’s investments were “made from his tax paid funds under the Liberalised Remittance Scheme (LRS) and has been duly accounted for and declared in his tax returns”.
“We reiterate that the investment by Mr Tendulkar has been legitimately made through banking channels from India and has been declared to the tax authorities,” the CEO stressed.
Ambani
According to The Indian Express, business tycoon Anil Ambani — chairman of Reliance Communications — and his representatives own a minimum of 18 offshore companies in Jersey, British Virgin Islands and Cyprus.
Seven of those companies, which were found out between 2007 and 2010, have borrowed and invested a minimum of $1.3 billion, consistent with the report.
“Records show that service providers which managed these companies placed on record that seven of those received loans from banks which were ‘guaranteed by Reliance/Anil Ambani, so as to form investments … For those investments that are realised, the monies were then, in turn, loaned out by the businesses to other companies’.”
Ambani had gotten into a dispute with three Chinese state banks in 2020, following which he had told a London court that his net worth was zero, the publication said within the report.
Congress leader
The Pandora Papers also named a veteran Congress leader, former minister and friend of the Gandhi family, Satish Sharma.
At least 10 of Sharma’s relations , including his wife, children and grandchildren are among the beneficiaries of the Jan Zegers Trust — a declaration the late politician never made to the country’s committee when he was filing his nomination papers, The Indian Express reported.
The Jan Zegers Trust was established within the Cayman Islands in 1995 when Sharma was the minister of petroleum and gas , consistent with the report. A second trust — JZ II Trust — was found out in 2015 when Sharma was a member of the Indian parliament.
