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Can India recover the Black Money deposited in Swiss Banks?

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sabir

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As I am very new in this forum I could not check whether it was discussed in this forum or not....hope you all will participate and provide informations what you have.

There are hundreds of reports about the possible Indian deposit in major banks in Switzerland. Though It is not possible for me to judge authenticity of these reports. However, it was in election agenda of BJP. Even CPM leaders wrote the PM about it. Recently, in an interview Mr Pranab Mukherjee said they are in dialogue with swiss officials.

Black money: In dialogue with Swiss officials, says Pranab
Express news service
Posted: 2009-07-15 12:55:46+05:30 IST
Updated: Jul 15, 2009 at 1255 hrs IST


New Delhi: Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee on Tuesday said that New Delhi has initiated a dialogue with Swiss authorities to obtain information on Indian black money stashed away in banks there — an issue that had raised much political heat during the elections with BJP leader L K Advani making it a major poll plank.
Mukherjee, at the same time, said the Government has no plans to bring in a new amnesty scheme for tax evaders, pointing out that in the past there have been complaints that the government was penalising the honest tax payer as in every such scheme the normal rate of tax was reduced. Efforts to amend the Indo-Mauritius tax treaty to curb its abuse, however, are being pursued, he said.
Mukherjee said Swiss banks had until now taken a position that they would not divulge information but as a consequence of global meltdown, there is pressure by OECD countries to bring in more transparency and revision of the Avoidance of Double Taxation Agreements. “I am told that the Swiss authorities have ultimately agreed to enter into negotiations,” he told the Rajya Sabha while claiming that the government is working to revise Double Tax Avoidance Agreements, particularly the secrecy clause, which it has with other countries. “It is an international commitment. Unilaterally, we cannot simply ignore it. If we ignore it, then further sources of information will be dried out. We are, therefore, negotiating with them,” he said.
As far as the new amnesty scheme is concerned, he said, “We are not very enamoured to have another type of disclosure scheme,” adding that the government was in talks with Mauritius to amend the tax treaty to check companies evading paying taxes in both countries. Delhi has also offered to compensate the Mauritius for any loss in revenues because of a change in the treaty.


Is India poor, who says? Ask Swiss banks

Is India poor, who says? Ask Swiss banks


With personal account deposit bank of $1500 billion in foreign reserve which have been
misappropriated, an amount 13 times larger than the country’s foreign debt, one needs to rethink if India is a poor country?.

DISHONEST INDUSTRIALISTS, scandalous politicians and corrupt IAS, IRS,IPS officers have deposited in foreign banks in their illegal personal accounts a sum of about $ 1500 billion, which have been misappropriated by them.

This amount is about 13 times larger than the country’s foreign debt. With this amount 45 crore poor people can get Rs 1,00,000 each. This huge amount has been appropriated from the people of India by exploiting and betraying them.

Once this huge amount of black money and property comes back to India , the entire foreign debt can be repaid in 24 hours. After paying the entire foreign debt, we will have surplus amount, almost 12 times larger than the foreign debt. If this surplus amount is invested
in earning interest, the amount of interest will be more than the annual budget of the Central government. So even if all the taxes are abolished, then also the Central government will be able to maintain the country very comfortably.

Some 80,000 people travel to Switzerland every year, of whom 25,000 travel very frequently.

“Obviously, these people won’t be tourists. They must be traveling there for some other reason,” believes an official involved in tracking illegal money. And, clearly, he isn’t referring to the commerce ministry bureaucrats who’ve been flitting in and out of Geneva ever since the World Trade Organisation (WTO) negotiations went into a tailspin!

Just read the following details and note how these dishonest industrialists, scandalous politicians, corrupt officers, cricketers, film actors, illegal sex trade and protected wildlife operators, to name just a few, sucked this country’s wealth and prosperity. This may be the picture of deposits in Swiss banks only. What about other international banks?

Black money in Swiss banks — Swiss Banking Association report, 2006 details bank deposits in the territory of Switzerland by nationals of following countries:

Top five
India—- $1,456 billion
Russia —$ 470 billion
UK ——-$390 billion
Ukraine - $100 billion
China —–$ 96 billion

Now do the maths - India with $1456 billion or $1.4 trillion has more money in Swiss banks than rest of the world combined. Public loot since 1947:

Can we bring back our money? It is one of the biggest loots witnessed by mankind — the loot of the Aam Aadmi (common man) since 1947, by his brethren occupying public office. It has been orchestrated by politicians, bureaucrats and some businessmen.

The list is almost all-encompassing. No wonder, everyone in India loots with impunity and without any fear.

What is even more depressing in that this ill-gotten wealth of ours has been stashed away abroad into secret bank accounts located in some of the world’s best known tax havens. And to that extent the Indian economy has been stripped of its wealth.

Ordinary Indians may not be exactly aware of how such secret accounts operate and what are the rules and regulations that go on to govern such tax havens. However, one may well be aware of ‘Swiss bank accounts,’ the shorthand for murky dealings, secrecy and of course
pilferage from developing countries into rich developed ones.

In fact, some finance experts and economists believe tax havens to be a conspiracy of the western world against the poor countries. By allowing the proliferation of tax havens in the twentieth century, the western world explicitly encourages the movement of scarce capital
from the developing countries to the rich.

In March 2005, the Tax Justice Network (TJN) published a research finding demonstrating that $11.5 trillion of personal wealth was held offshore by rich individuals across the globe.

The findings estimated that a large proportion of this wealth was managed from some 70 tax havens. Further, augmenting these studies of TJN, Raymond Baker — in his widely
celebrated book titled ‘Capitalism’ s Achilles Heel: Dirty Money and How to Renew the Free Market System’ — estimates that at least $5 trillion have been shifted out of poorer countries to the West since the mid-1970.

It is further estimated by experts that one per cent of the world’s population holds more than 57 per cent of total global wealth, routing it invariably through these tax havens. How much of this is from India is anybody’s guess.

What is to be noted here is that most of the wealth of Indians parked in these tax havens is illegitimate money acquired through corrupt means.

Naturally, the secrecy associated with the bank accounts in such places is central to the issue, not their low tax rates as the term ‘tax havens’ suggests. Remember Bofors and how India could not trace the ultimate beneficiary of those transactions because of the secrecy
associated with these bank accounts? IS THERE ANY ONE WHO WOULD SAVE INDIA ?God... No No No, even he can’t..........!!

Ramesh C. Manghirmalani




Seek details about black money from Swiss Banks: CPM tells Govt


New Delhi With one of the Swiss banks agreeing to provide information to the US about its account-holders, the CPI(M) on Monday demanded that the UPA government should seek details of Indians who have illegally stashed funds in Switzerland and other tax havens.
The CPI(M) Polit Bureau said it is imperative that the UPA government demand details of Indian account-holders from Swiss banks and from banks in other tax havens.
“In the case of India, it is not only a case of tax evasion but also of funds being illegally stashed abroad, or used for money laundering,” the CPI(M) said in a statement.
The CPI(M) reminded the government that UBS, the largest Swiss Bank, has agreed to provide information to the US of account-holders who are suspected to have evaded taxes in America while British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has also called for such an action.
“If the (UPA) government is serious about stopping black money and raising resources to meet growing economic crisis, it must take steps to bring back the unaccounted, or, ill-gotten wealth of Indians abroad,” the party said.
The Swiss banks with secret accounts are known to hold substantial sum of money deposited by Indians, it said adding “these funds amounting to billions of dollars were either illegally taken out of the country or were deposited in Switzerland and other tax havens instead of being repatriated to India.”
 
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one more thing....what it has to do in defence forum..........a large portion of this amount is cut money that our politicians and arms brokers embazzled in different defence deal....
 
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GOI has to clear all black money into white and ask those people who deposit that amount into Swiss bank just give us 30% tax and make your money into white GOI promise that they not ask any think abt that money how they earn that money whatever... at least Goi got 30% and rest of amount come at India
 
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It all depends on the political will, and whoever takes that decision has to face a lot of flak .
 
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U.S. probe targets UBS banker visits - report - Yahoo! India News
U.S. probe targets UBS banker visits - report
Mon, Jul 27 09:11 AM
U.S. authorities are targeting client visits by Swiss-based bankers from UBS in their efforts to identify U.S. citizens with accounts at the bank who may have evaded tax, a Swiss newspaper said on Sunday.
U.S. tax authorities want to force UBS to disclose the identity of an estimated 52,000 U.S. holders of secret Swiss accounts suspected of dodging taxes, even though this breaches Swiss bank secrecy laws.
A possible compromise involving the names of account-holders visited by Swiss bankers would identify about 10,000 people, Swiss weekly Sonntags-Zeitung said.
A UBS spokesman declined to comment, noting the negotiations were a matter for the two governments. A Swiss Justice Department spokesman said the two sides had agreed not to comment while negotiations continued.
A trial against UBS had been scheduled to start in Miami on July 13, but presiding judge Alan Gold agreed to delay it until Aug. 3 to allow time for a settlement.
On Friday a source familiar with the situation said talks between Switzerland and the United States to end the tax row could stretch beyond the Aug. 3 deadline.
A status call between Gold and lawyers from UBS and the U.S. Internal Revenue Service on July 29 could be an opportunity for an announcement of a delay. A meeting between Swiss Finance Minister Micheline Calmy-Rey and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is also scheduled on July 31.
NAMING NAMES, PROTECTING SECRETS
The challenge for the two sides is to find a way for Switzerland to hand over enough information to satisfy the U.S. tax authorities without infringing Switzerland's strict laws protecting banking secrecy.
Sonntags-Zeitung, citing a U.S. source familiar with the negotiations, said one solution would be to draw on the existing double taxation agreement between Switzerland and the U.S., which allows Swiss authorities to provide official assistance to Washington to help in a criminal investigation.
It said the U.S. justice department would seek the names of all U.S. customers of UBS visited by bankers from Switzerland between 2001 and 2007.
UBS's U.S. offshore business employed around 60 customer advisers in Switzerland, the paper said.
According to a U.S. Senate committee report last year, each of these advisers visited the U.S. up to three times a year, meeting about four customers a day on a trip lasting up to three weeks, resulting in about 10,000 customer contacts a year.
Since UBS has already admitted that its efforts to solicit offshore business broke U.S. law, the U.S. authorities could demand this information without infringing Swiss banking secrecy, which would not be the case if they simply asked for the names of account-holders without any justified suspicion.
UBS settled related tax-fraud criminal charges when it agreed in February to pay $780 million and to exit its U.S. offshore banking business.
The settlement was seen as a serious blow to Swiss bank secrecy as the bank agreed to hand over around 250 names of American clients.
Another Swiss paper, Sonntag, said Andreas Rued, a lawyer representing eight clients, would sue for compensation if Switzerland's top court found the Swiss government acted illegally in ordering UBS to hand over those names.
Rued could not be reached for comment.
The Swiss bank, which has already said it will report another quarterly loss on Aug. 4, needs to put the tax litigation behind it to focus on restructuring and regain client confidence.


What we are doing? :what:
 
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India negotiating with Swiss authorities on secrecy clauses
19 Jul 2009, 1344 hrs IST, PTI



NEW DELHI: India is negotiating with Switzerland and other countries to revise the secrecy clause in bilateral treaties like double taxation

avoidance agreements to get information on matters like black money.

Official sources said unless secrecy clauses change, the government cannot do much about black money stashed in banks of Switzerland and other countries. India is negotiating with Switzerland and other countries to change these secrecy clauses in the Double Taxation Avoidance Agreement (DTAA).

If these clauses change, appropriate Indian authorities could have information, which currently is exchanged only with tax authorities, they said. The issue came to the fore during the Lok Sabha election when opposition parties demanded repatriation of black money stashed away in tax havens.

Sources said the government is negotiating with Mauritius to amend the DTAA to prevent companies routing investment through that country to India, to avoid paying taxes. Various companies have been incorporated in Mauritius to take advantage of the Indo-Mauritius treaty, which is called treaty shopping.

According to the treaty, capital gains are to be assessed in accordance with the law of the state of residence of the entity. Under Mauritian law, tax is not levied on capital gains, which means that capital gains made by an Mauritian entity on transfer of shares in an Indian company go unassessed.

Mauritius provides these tax exemptions as it is building itself as a financial hub. Sources said India is prepared to compensate Mauritius for financial losses if the treaty is amended.

Earlier this year, Switzerland had agreed to ease the country's strict banking secrecy rules and co-operate with the tax authorities of other countries in areas where fraud is suspected, even as other tax havens like Austria and Luxembourg said they would consider easing secrecy laws on a case-to-case basis.

Switzerland's offer came after talks with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which sets rules on bank data sharing. The OECD has been spearheading a campaign in favour of transparency and exchange of information on tax matters.

Luxembourg and Austria said they would relax their banking secrecy laws and co-operate with foreign tax authorities in cases where fraud is suspected. Pressure is mounting on tax havens to ease bank secrecy rules.

Earlier, the UPA government had filed an affidavit in the Supreme Court saying that it had taken steps regarding Indians' black money in certain foreign banks. Regarding deposits in Switzerland banks, the affidavit had said that consequent to the government's teamwork with the international community, Switzerland has agreed to make its "guarded" banking laws and rules more transparent, in accordance with the global standards.

The affidavit was filed in response to a public interest petition filed by former Law Minister and eminent jurist Ram Jethmalani and five others who have been seeking a direction for the government to take action to bring back money to the tune of "Rs 70 lakh crore" stashed in foreign banks.

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com...es-on-secrecy-clauses/articleshow/4795046.cms
 
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Black money trail: Swiss ready to revise treaty
TNN 4 May 2009, 12:44am IST

NEW DELHI: The government has approached Swiss authorities to renegotiate its Double Taxation Avoidance Agreement (DTAA), a tax treaty between the
two countries in force since 1995, to obtain details of bank accounts maintained by Indians in Switzerland.

The Swiss government has in the past refused to share bank information pertaining to Indians with New Delhi on the ground that such details were not necessary for application of the DTAA. Swiss authorities had expressed inability to provide details, citing their own laws, since India's requests were related to enforcement of its internal tax laws.

However, after the G-20 nations adopted a tough posture at their recently held London summit, seeking to bring tax havens and non-cooperating jurisdictions under close scrutiny, Swiss authorities expressed willingness to cooperate.
Just before the London summit, the Swiss confederation had told the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) -- a Paris-based group with 30 member countries including the US, UK and many European nations -- that it was ready to withdraw its earlier reservation on sharing information and renegotiate its tax treaty with other governments.

But how effective the revised tax treaty will be is quite clear from a rider provided by the Centre in the affidavit it submitted before the Supreme Court on the subject last week. The affidavit said, ``Even as per the OECD standards, unless specific information about the depositors becomes available, fishing or roving enquiry is not permissible.''

India is part of the task force constituted by the G-20 at its London summit to formulate a ``global plan for recovery and reform which promises to take action against non-cooperative jurisdictions, including tax havens and also to deploy sanctions to protect public finances and financial systems''.

On alleged role of Swiss banks in the 2004 stock market crash, the affidavit said that Securities and Exchange Board of India had in 2005 barred Swiss financial institution UBS Asia from issuing and renewing any participatory notes for a year. But this was following its refusal to disclose information relating to an investigation carried out by Sebi, not for its role in the market crash.

Black money trail: Swiss ready to revise treaty - India - NEWS - The Times of India
 
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We can share details of tax evaders: Switzerland

IANS 3 September 2009, 06:32pm IST
NEW DELHI: India and Switzerland will soon start negotiations to enlarge the scope of their bilateral double taxation treaty to allow sharing of
details of bank accounts of people accused of tax evasion, visiting Swiss Vice-President and Minister of Economic Affairs Doris Leuthard said on Thursday.

"We are open to renegotiation of the treaty to include tax evasion, which is a crime here. The first round of talks will take place soon," Leuthard told reporters here.

The Swiss minister said that the offer had been made by her country to other nations with which it has similar treaties.

"It means that if India has a case of tax evasion against a citizen who has an account in our banks, then India can apply through set procedures to know the details," she said.

As per the Swiss ambassador to India Philippe Welti, the bilateral discussions will take place before the end of this year.

Leuthard is here to take part in the World Trade Organisation (WTO) ministerial discussions.

Swiss banking secrecy had been in the news recently after India was refused permission to look through accounts of UBS AG. The US had, however, been allowed access to details of over 4,000 bank account holders.

It is expected that Switzerland would allow the sharing of bank account details of Indian citizens once the revised double taxation treaty is drawn up and signed.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/...x-evaders-Switzerland/articleshow/4968484.cms
 
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Its a really good news. If India can even tax that huge amount of black money(reportedly about $1500bn) , that will be a great monetary gain for the country.
 
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With personal account deposit bank of $1500 billion in foreign reserve which have been misappropriated, an amount 13 times larger than the country’s foreign debt, one needs to rethink if India is a poor country?.

Anyone knows where this figure came from?? For sure most of these banks swiss or otherwise did not release details of their client account.

And EVEN IF this figure is correct that will make indian politicians and business one of most corrupt in the world.
 
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Anyone knows where this figure came from?? For sure most of these banks swiss or otherwise did not release details of their client account.

And EVEN IF this figure is correct that will make indian politicians and business one of most corrupt in the world.

Swiss bank might just be releasing only aggregate total.

Yes, Indian Politicians are the most corrupted. They don't want to pay taxes....
 
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Black money in Swiss banks — Swiss Banking Association report, 2006 details bank deposits in the territory of Switzerland by nationals of following countries:

Top five
India—- $1,456 billion
Russia —$ 470 billion
UK ——-$390 billion
Ukraine - $100 billion
China —–$ 96 billion

Almost all the sources say that its from Swiss Banking Association report, 2006 and they gave an country wise deposit amount there, India tops the list and one has to believe that most, if not all of these money are black. Why would a person keep money in Swiss otherwise and yes it does prove how corrupted our babus are. The big question at this point will India be able to bring back the money or at least tax the money. If it does than it will be a huge boon for the country.
 
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..........and if this money were to be divided equally among all the Indians that would amount equals to 70000 INR per head or 1400$ per head:woot::woot:
 
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