Saturday, October 18, 2014

Swiss government agrees to provide details of black money: Arun Jaitley

Talking to reporters here on a day his government came under attack for expressing inability in the Supreme Court in disclosing names of black money holders abroad, he said, Switzerland has agreed to share information related to HSBC and Liechtenstein lists, provided there is independent evidence collected by Indian authorities.

Besides, the Swiss government would "confirm the genuineness or otherwise" details of foreign accounts of Indian citizens procured by intelligence agencies, Jaitley said.
  
"The Government of India is taking all necessary steps to access tax-related information from foreign governments... Black money stashed abroad will be brought back," he said, disclosing details of the discussions held by an official delegation with Swiss government which returned this morning.

After the government toed the UPA government's line in the Supreme Court hearing today, Jaitley blamed the agreement entered into by the Congress government with Germany in 1995 as a constraining factor in disclosing details of black money stashed abroad.
  
He rejected the charge that the Modi government was reluctant to part with information about the names of persons having black money abroad.
  
"Is the present NDA government led by Modi in any way reluctant to make some names public? Certainly not. We have no difficulty in making names public. But they can be made public only in accordance with due process of law.     "And the due process of law has been constrained by DTAA (Double Taxation Avoidance Agreement) which was entered into between India and Germany when the Congress Party was in power on June 19, 1995," he said.

Earlier in the day, Congress had slammed the Modi government for refusing to disclose the names of persons having black money accounts to the Supreme Court.


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