In response to the notice issued by the Supreme Court of India on the Public Interest Litigation filed by Mr. Ram Jethmalani, the Government has filed an affidavit to the court.
I searched on the internet if I could get the full text of the affidavit but could not the same. However, this ANI report found at www.thaindian.com shows that the Government has not directly answered the steps taken to get this money back to India. We have to wait and see how the cases progresses at the apex court.
The government of India on Saturday filed an affidavit in the Supreme Court on the steps taken by it on the black money stashed by Indian nationals in Swiss banks.
The Centre assured the apex court that it was doing its level best to retrieve the amount of over Rs. 70 lakh crore in black money believed to be stored in foreign banks by rich Indians.
The affidavit was filed in response to a public Interest Litigation (PIL) filed by former Law Minister and reputed jurist Ram Jethmalani, former Lok Sabha General Secretary Subhash C Kashyap and former Punjab Police chief KPS Gill, who have been seeking court’s direction to the government to bring back the black money.
In the affidavit, the government has claimed that the lawsuit filed against it was ” politically motivated”.
Doubting the intensions of filing the lawsuit in the middle of the general elections, the Centre sought the dismissal of the PIL.
Jethmalani and others had mentioned the petition in front of the Court on April 22. They had alleged that the government was taking no action on the black money issue.
Though the apex court had not issued notice, it had posted the matter for hearing on May 4 after the ASG had promised to file the affidavit within 48 hours.
Dismissing the charges by the petitioners, the ASG had pointed out that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, in his opening speech at the recent G-20 submit in London, had said that “there should be an absolute transparency and banking secrecy should be over”. – API (Thanks – www.thaindian.com)
The Swiss banks are said to have the highest deposits by Indians. This fact was exposed after Swiss banks were forced by the US and other Western countries to disclose the details of their nationals who maintain accounts with them.
The issue has recently been raked up by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), who have demanded an immediate action to bring back the unaccounted money from the foreign banks.
In the meanwhile, the former Finance Minister Mr. P Chidambaram has told that the Indian Government has taken much more steps than other countries in unearthing the money stashed in the Swiss banks. He refers to steps taken as early as in Feb 2008.
We have done enough to unearth Swiss money: PC
New Delhi: Union Home Minister P Chidambaram today claimed that the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government had “done more than any other country” to unearth money in Swiss and other foreign banks, lodged there by individuals to evade taxes.
“As soon as I saw the newspaper report (about the LTG Bank), I contacted the German government and sought its help. The government also promptly invoked a legislation to do away with the problems of double taxation with Germany. I will say some progress have been made,” Chidambaram said at a press conference today.
“To know the current position you have to ask the current finance minister, but I can say there is progress in the matter. We have done more than what the US and the UK have done,” Chidambaram said.
The home minister took a dig at the BJP and its allies like the Janata Dal (United) that have raised the issue in the run-up to the general elections. “If my memory serves me right, the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government too had a home minister and a finance minister for six years.
What did they do during that period? And I must humbly say to the BJP, Wikipedia (an online encyclopedia that puts the figure of Indian money in Swiss banks at Rs 25 lakh crore) can’t be the basis of political allegations,” he said. This is the figure senior BJP leader LK Advani had cited.
On February 29, 2008, the finance ministry had written to the Federal Central Tax Office in Bonn to seek information about Indians who may have accounts with Liechtenstein’s LGT Bank. This was following the sale of bank data by an employee to the government of Germany that revealed details of money parked in the bank by individuals to escape tax scrutiny.
Source: Business Standard
