This Article is From Jan 25, 2011

Not going fishing in Swiss banks: Pranab

New Delhi:

Finance Minster Pranab Mukherjee has said that the government is looking into the rejection by Swiss banks of New Delhi's request to look through accounts to find incriminating details.

The Swiss Banker's Association has said their laws do not allow them to share this information with India.

Their snub comes just days after Swiss authorities gave out client details to the US government. Swiss authorities say India has to request information about specific tax evasion fraud or criminal cases.

It's now certain, India won't get the same access to secret Swiss Bank accounts that the US got.

The Swiss banking association has told NDTV that India must first overhaul its double taxation treaty to the same standards of the advanced countries and sign it with Switzerland.

"First thing for India to do would to make sure that double taxation treaty is revised to OECD standards and if they require information in a criminal case they should make an official request through existing channel. We did provide them information during the famous Bofors case," said James Nason, head, Swiss Banking Association.

Nason further said: "Swiss laws do not permit fishing expeditions or, the indiscriminate trawling through bank accounts in the hope of finding something interesting. This means that India cannot simply throw its telephone book at Switzerland and ask if any of these people have a bank account here,"

Washington has got access to Swiss accounts of about 4500 wealthy Americans. Reports suggest, this happened only after the US aggressively put pressure on the reluctant Swiss.

So, if America can pressurise Swiss authorities to give in why cant India do the same? Swiss banks claim it wasn't mere pressure that worked, the US got into a long tax investigation and US authorities filed a specific case against UBS.

India doesn't have the same clout as the US, but what hasn't helped is that New Delhi hasn't got its act together either.

For instance:
Only one specific request was sent in the case of Hasan Ali and that too rejected by the Swiss who claimed the documents were forged.

The PIL filed estimates that seventy lakh crore rupees is stashed away in secret accounts - that's more than India's GDP.

The government has promised in Parliament to get it back but it might take years.

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