New Delhi, Jan. 19: The Supreme Court today lashed out at the government for hiding behind “niceties” while black money lay stashed in banks abroad, a matter that amounted to “plunder of the national economy” and was a “mind-boggling crime”, the bench said.

“People are taking money out of the country. It is pure and simple theft of national wealth… and you are talking about the niceties of this treaty and that treaty,” Justice S.S. Nijjar said.

The jab was a reaction to solicitor-general Gopal Subramaniam’s submission that the government was ready to share whatever information it had on black money with the court but it should not be made public.

Subramaniam contended that the information available with him was restricted to those who had accounts in Liechtenstein. Revealing this would violate the confidentiality clause in the Double Taxation Avoidance Agreement signed with Germany, he said.

The bench refused to accept his submission.

“Why are you restricting the scope of this petition? Are we precluded from asking larger questions in public interest?” Justice Nijjar asked. “The basic issue is information about money belonging to Indians lying in all banks,” he said.

Lawyer Ram Jethmalani, former top cop K.P.S. Gill and Constitution expert Subhas Kashyap had filed a PIL seeking the apex court’s intervention to retrieve the money.

Earlier, their counsel Anil B. Divan had said the Centre had received information from Germany about such accounts but was refusing to share it citing the double-taxation avoidance agreement.

Such agreements are signed to avoid the same income, asset or transaction being taxed by two countries.

Justice B. Sudershan Reddy, the other judge on the bench, today asked the government whether the few names it had revealed to the court was “all the information” it had.

The solicitor-general said: “There is no shortage of information” but making it public would come in the way of the agreements with other countries to share such information. Subramaniam said the government had signed agreements with several governments to secure information on such accounts.

Petitioners’ counsel Divan, however, cited the few known cases to show that the government had not started criminal proceedings against anyone. He said that the money could be drug cash or even terror funds. The government seemed to have assumed that these were only cases of tax evasion, he said.

No quick result: PM

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today said there was “no instant solution” to bring back black money.

“There is no instant solution to bring back what is called black money. We have got some information and that has been provided to us for use in the collection of due taxes,” he told PTI.

“We cannot use the information for any other purpose and that information cannot be made public.”