No info on Swiss bank accounts, govt to CIC

MEA says no record of Indians with secret bank accounts in Switzerland and Leichestenstein.

Updated on: Jan 23, 2011, 23:09:53 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Amid reports that Wikileaks may have details of Indian account holders in Swiss banks, the Indian government denied having any such information. Or this, atleast, is what it told the transparency watchdog — Central Information Commission — last week.

As per the Swiss Banking Association Report of 2008, India tops the list of countries with deposits in Swiss banks with US $1,891 billion, followed by Russia and China.

The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) told Information Commissioner Annapurna Dixit that there was no record of any list of Indians holding secret accounts in Swiss banks.

“No such information has been provided by the Switzerland government or any other body to the MEA,” said the ministry’s Public Information Officer Debraj Pradhan, in an oral submission before the Central Information Commission (CIC).

RTI applicant Pramod Chawla wanted to know whether the Swiss or German governments have provided details of secret accounts held by Indian nationals in Swiss banks and banks in Leichestenstein (a tiny, landlocked country between Switzerland and Austria, widely regarded as a low-tax haven).

The government told the Supreme Court this week that it has received names of some account holders in banks in Leichestenstein but refused to divulge them stating it was bound by an agreement with the government of Germany.

The government added that no such information was available with regard to secret accounts in Swiss banks by Indians and that it was re-negotiating the Double Taxation Avoidance Agreement with the government of Switzerland to obtain such information. Following the oral submission, Dixit asked Pradhan to submit an affidavit stating that neither the list of the account holders nor any other information about such investigation, sought in the application, is available on record.

At the time the CIC was issuing the order, WikiLeaks got a disc containing the banking details of 2,000 prominent people with Swiss bank accounts, some of whom are also said to be Indians.

The disc was presented to Wikileaks founder Julian Assange by former Swiss banker Rudolf Elmer. Although Wikileaks is yet to publish details of the disc on its website, some television channels have released names of account holders similar to Indian names.

Dubious distinction

As per the Swiss Banking Association Report 2008, India tops the list of countries with deposits in Swiss banks:

India: $1,891 billion
Russia: $610 billion
China: $213 billion
UK: $210 billion
Ukraine: $140 billion
nRest of the world: $300 bn

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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