Chairman Federal Board of Revenue (FBR), Syed Muhammad Shabbar Zaidi, has directed all the CEOs and Presidents of commercial banks to provide information relating to Benami accounts within a fortnight.
Chairman FBR, in his letter, recalled the earlier meeting held with CFOs of all banks where it was agreed that all the banks will internally try to seek information from their account holders about the ‘Mandated’ or ‘Benami’ Account holders within their system. Zaidi hoped that requisite steps would be taken by the banks to gather such information.
Chairman FBR added that FBR is mandated to take action against Benami Accounts under the Benami Transaction (Prohibition) Ordinance, 2017. He has requested the banks to share all the gathered information in this regard, which shall be kept highly confidential.
The best approach in this regard is mutual cooperation, voluntary compliance, and close coordination between banks and FBR. The revenue authority has a legal obligation under the aforesaid law to identify such assets, the letter further read.
It is pertinent to mention here that banks already had shared the database of account holders with a holding of over Rs. 20 million in their bank accounts upon which the FBR claimed to begin its working to identify Benami accounts, hidden assets, and non-payment of taxes.
Earlier, FBR asked the CEOs to provide the database of the account holders having deposits over Rs. 5 million; who can be approached to ask the money trail and the source of income.
Banks through the central bank tried to resist transferring the database of all its account holders under the secrecy law but these banking companies are vetting the database of their customers on their own and making their customers record straight.
FBR’s repeated statements on the access of public bank accounts caused panic among the customers who are withdrawing their money to prevent themselves from probing by the tax machinery.
Banks are being asked to incriminate themselves. Why would they do this? They are opening themselves up for criminal charges in the future. After all they facilitated the opening of these accounts and continue to keep them active.