Journalists all over the place are zealously digging up evidence of tax avoidance by individuals and companies, based on what's emerging from the so-called Panama Papers.

Many culprits haven't yet been named and it's possible some of the worst may never be. What a pity if - in the lulls that customarily follow such media storms - they were ignored?

Among these must surely be the Indian mining capitalist Anil Agarwal, chairman and majority owner of London-listed Vedanta Resources plc.

Not that he appears to have dipped his feet in the murky waters of South and Central America. But he's certainly swum with sharks in the Indian Ocean, specifically those that lurk around the tax haven of Mauritius.

By any global benchmark, Agarwal and family rank among the worst of tax offenders. It's something a few diligent Indian researchers have acknowledged for years.

The latest multi-million dollar spat revolves around Vedanta's attempts to offload its onerous carried debt, some time before it acquired the oil firm Cairn India,which was acquired from Cairn Energy of Scotland in 2011.

See: How did Vedanta grab India's richest oilfields?

Gormless at the Cairn? *

Now, the Indian government is demanding a huge amount of unpaid withholding tax from Vedanta which, it  claims, was chalked up when the oily deal was done.

And Agarwal is refusing to pay  - arguing that he's not at all responsible for any of Cairn Energy's past liabilities.

This seems akin to the argument, recently used by British prime minister, David Cameron, that he's not to blame for his own father's acumulation of family wealth, despite is accruing it tax-free income from a fund registered in Panama.

We doubt that many people - not least in India - will be taken aback by Agarwal's similar self-serving manoeuvre.

For such behaviour on his part goes back over more than two decades.

Drawing on invaluable research by Paranjoy Guha Thakurta (now managing editor of India's distinguised Economic and Political Weekly), in 2009 we revealed that the Agarwal clan has been trying to hoodwink the Indian government for more than twenty years:

“[I]n 2002, the year before the FSA allowed Sterlite to reconstitute itself as Vedanta Resources plc, India's Enforcement Directorate (ED) - the regulatory body for foreign exchange transactions - served a 'show cause' notice on three of the Agarwal family”

The notice demanded that the Sterlite directors “answer allegations of using their holding companies to avoid paying domestic taxes on foreign exchange transactions. It was a polite way of saying there was prima facie evidence, dating back to 1993, that the Agarwals had been guilty of money laundering on a vast scale”. 

To this day, the Agarwals haven't been held to account.

See: Sixteen years of fraud?

And the family still hasn't made amends

Will all "come out" in the wash?

The amount owed by the Indian multi-billionaire, according to  India's Enforcement Directorate is some 20,000 crore rupees.

That's almost exactly that now being claimed in respect of the Cairn India takeover.

True to form, when commenting on this latest super-spat with the Indian government  the South Asia oligarch hopes that "something will come out".

To his own advantage. of course.

This is as near as dammit to an expression immortalised by one of Charles Dickens characters in the 19th century novel, David Copperfield **.

But Mr Micawber was drawn by Dickens as a distinctly comic fictional player. Apart from their physical "robustness", that's all that he and Agarwalhave in common.

And there's little to make us laugh at the antics of Mr Agarwaral.

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* Cairn Gorm is one of the highest mountains in Britain

** Mr Micawber preferred using the term "something will come up"

[London Calling is written by Nostromo Research. Opinions expressed in this column do not necessairly reflect those of an other author, including he editors of this website. Reproducton is welcomed under a Creative Commons Licence]