ED Questions Aishwarya Rai Bachchan in Panama Papers Leak Case

Aishwarya Rai reached the ED office in the afternoon, where she was being grilled over the case. 

New Delhi: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) quizzed Bollywood actor Aishwarya Rai Bachchan on Monday in a case linked to the 2016 ‘Panama Papers’ global tax leaks case. Aishwarya Rai reached the ED office in the afternoon, where she was being grilled over the case.

Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, 48, the daughter-in-law of superstar Amitabh Bachchan, was summoned by ED for questioning in Delhi.

The ED has been probing the case since 2016 when the global leaks came to light. It later issued notices to the Bachchan family asking them to explain their foreign remittances since 2004 under the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) Liberalised Remittance Scheme (LRS).

Some other instances of alleged irregularities linked to the family are also under the scanner of the federal probe agency, the officials said.

Dubbed ‘Panama Papers’, an investigation of a stockpile of records from Panamanian legal firm Mossack Fonseca by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists had named several world leaders and celebrities who had allegedly stashed away money abroad in offshore companies. Some of them are stated to be holding valid overseas accounts.

All You Need to Know About Panama Papers Case:

In 2016, more than 11 million documents (or 2.6 terabytes of data) of Mossack Fonseca (MF), a Panama-based law firm, were leaked. The leaked document called ‘Panama Papers’ revealed a global network of offshore companies helping the wealthy hide their assets.

The list of prominent personalities, who were found to be attached with offshore companies across the world in the leaked Panama Papers, includes names like Amitabh Bachchan, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, DLF owner K P Singh and Gautam Adani’s elder brother Vinod Adani.

According to the investigation conducted by a chain of media outlets including Indian publication The Indian Express, over 500 Indians figure on the Panama Papers’s list of offshore companies. The leaked documents had then revealed that Aishwarya Rai and her family members were part of a company incorporated in the British Virgin Islands, a tax haven, for at least three years. The company shortened Aishwarya Rai’s name to A Rai for reasons of confidentiality. The company also changed Aishwarya’s status in the firm; from director to the shareholder.

Till 2003, no Indian was allowed to set up an overseas entity. But in 2004, RBI liberalized the norms and allowed Indians to buy shares in overseas companies but never allowed them to set up companies abroad. The leaked papers have revealed that most of the offshore companies set up by the Indians were much before 2004.