Cairn accepts $1-bn refund offer, to drop cases against India: CEO

UK-based Cairn Energy PLC on Tuesday said it will drop litigations to seize Indian properties in countries ranging from France to the US, within a couple of days of getting a $1-billion refund resulting from the scrapping of a retrospective tax law. The firm termed “bold” the legislation passed last month to cancel a 2012 policy that gave the tax department power to go back 50 years and slap capital gains levies wherever ownership had changed hands overseas but business assets were in India.The offer to return money seized to enforce retrospective tax demand in lieu of dropping all litigations against the government “is acceptable to us,” Cairn CEO Simon Thomson said in an interview from London