Modi Govt Cracks Down Black Money in Swiss Accounts

After 3 years of forming SIT on bringing back black money, Prime Minister Modi and his team has tasted some success as the Switzerland Government has ratified the Global Convention on Automatic Exchange of Information.

A Drop of Success in the Ocean of Challenges

Three years back when Narendra Modi was challenging the UPA government over corruption charges, Modi pledged to bring black money from abroad in 100 days and some overheard it that 1.5M rupees will be deposited in people’s account as well but that was all Jumla according to Amit Shah, the National President of BJP. On the serious note, the government has tasted success as the Switzerland government has ratified the global convention on automatic exchange of information regarding the bank details and transaction of nationals of respective countries.

The Swiss Federal Council said that implementation of AEOI will take place in 2018 and the flow of data will start from September 2019. This step is based on many previous agreements like Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development or OECD, under which Multilateral Competent Authority Agreement or MCAA was formed on the Automatic Exchange of Financial Account Information which is based on International Standard for the Exchange of Information developed by OECD.

How will the Agreement help Indian Government against Black Money?

Under this, the Swiss government will pass all the bank details or financial details made by Indian nationals in Swiss banks in bulk instead of specific information based on requests. Swiss banks have remained safe heavens for tax evaders as their identity was confidential but under this agreement they can’t hide their face anymore. Also this would be beneficial in many more ways as the flow information will be in bulk and general. Earlier, the government had to request the country to provide details on individuals in specific cases which was tedious.

The thing that India needs to do is to ensure the Swiss government regarding the confidentiality of the data so that it doesn’t gets leaked. The Swiss government is satisfied with the Indian norms on Information and Taxation. We can hope that this step proves out to be a game changer in the big fight against black money as there is lot to do in this.