Black money: Swiss to provide info in time-bound manner

In a breakthroug, as India steps up its pursuit of black money stashed abroad, Switzerland on Wednesday agreed to assist Indian authorities on a priority basis and provide requested banking information in a “time-bound manner”.
The Swiss authorities would also “assist in obtaining confirmation on genuineness of bank documents on request by the Indian side and also swiftly provide information on requests related to non-banking information”. The breakthrough was achieved at a high-level meeting between senior government officials of the two countries in Berne.
“… the Swiss competent authority will provide the Indian side with the requested information in a time-bound manner or else indicate the reasons why the cases cannot be answered within the agreed timeline,” a Swiss-Indian joint statement said after a high-level meeting between the officials of the two countries on tax matters.
The meeting took place in Berne between revenue secretary Shaktikanta Das and his Swiss counterpart, state secretary for international financial matters, Jacques de Watteville.
As per Swiss National Bank’s latest data, the total money held by Indians in Swiss banks stood at over Rs 14,000 crore as on December 2013, up by nearly 42 per cent from a year ago.
Switzerland, which also agreed to consider including India among the nations for automatic exchange of information, has been repeatedly rejecting India’s requests for information on Indians named in a so-called HSBC list.