NEW DELHI - India expects to receive data from Swiss authorities on HSBC accounts of its citizens in about 10 days after Switzerland's apex court directions that data be shared with the Indian government, Finance Minister Piyush Goyal said today.
Serious efforts are on to check black money. Though there are no official estimates of such money stashed in foreign countries a tax demand of Rs 5,447 crore has been made in HSBC undisclosed income of Rs 8,448 crore, Goyal said in the Rajya Sabha during the Question Hour, PTI has reported.
"The Supreme Court of Switzerland has ordered the Swiss government to share with us that data in about a week or ten days ...We are going to get that," the Finance Minister said replying to a supplementary on a question on black money deposited in foreign banks.
He said the HSBC list was released somewhere in the year 2010-11 and from 2011-12 to 2014 the government kept trying to make an effort but was stalled by the Swiss government from getting any information on the ground that this is secret information as the source is a stolen source which is illegal.
"It is only after this government came in that we sent our Revenue Secretary to Switzerland. We had high-level discussions with the government of Switzerland and a joint statement was issued on October 15, 2015 by which both sides agreed that they will share information with each other and since then we have started getting information on HSBC accounts," the Minister said.
He said now the same process has been initiated with other countries and automatic sharing of information pacts are with several countries.
On the HSBC list, the minister said that undisclosed income of Rs 8,448 crore was detected with a tax demand of 5,447 crore. Penalty of Rs 1,290 crore has been levied in 164 cases. So far 199 prosecutions complaints have been filed in 84 cases.
As regards Panama papers, the Minister said, it contained details of 426 persons and investigations are going on in all cases.
"So far 62 invasive actions have been conducted which included seizure action in 50 cases and survey action in 12 cases," the Minister said.