Congress President Rahul Gandhi on Friday, 29 June, took to Twitter to take a jibe at Prime Minister Modi and his government over reports of a 50 percent rise in the money parked by Indians in the Swiss banks.
In his latest salvo, Gandhi raked up PM Modi’s promise of offering Rs 15 lakh to every Indian and his claim of making India free of black money through demonetisation.
Gandhi’s attack came after union Finance Minister Piyush Goyal said that he government would get data regarding the same from Swiss authorities by the end of the fiscal year and that it should not be assumed that the money of Indians in Swiss banks is unaccounted.
Goyal told reporters on 29 June:
Agreement between India and Switzerland has this. From 1 January 2018 till end of accounting year, all data will be made available. So why assume this is black money or illegal transactions?
According to reports, money deposited by Indians in Swiss banks had risen to Rs 7,000 crore in 2017, reversing a three-year downward trend amid India's clampdown on suspected black money stashed there.
In comparison, the total funds held by all foreign clients of Swiss banks rose about 3 percent to CHF 1.46 trillion or about Rs 100 lakh crore in 2017, according to the official annual data released on 28 June by Swiss National Bank (SNB), the central banking authority of the Alpine nation.
The surge in Indian money held with Swiss banks comes as a surprise given India’s continuing clampdown on suspected black money stashed abroad, including in banks of Switzerland that used to be known for their famed secrecy walls for years
The Indian money in Swiss banks had fallen by 45 percent in 2016, marking their biggest ever yearly plunge, to CHF 676 million (about Rs 4,500 crore) – the lowest ever since the European nation began making the data public in 1987.
According to the SNB data, the total funds held by Indians directly with Swiss banks rose to 999 million Swiss franc (Rs 6,891 crore) in 2017, while the same held through fiduciaries or wealth managers increased to CHF 16.2 million (Rs 112 crore). These figures stood at CHF 664.8 million and CHF 11 million, respectively, at the end of 2016.
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