Switzerland forced to share information on HSBC Indian clients
Switzerland’s Supreme Court has ordered the country’s authorities to turn over information on HSBC accounts with the Indian government regarding two of its citizens.
Both clients had fought the release on the grounds that India’s request for assistance in a tax-dodging probe arose from stolen bank data.
The case involved information leaked by whistleblower Herve Falciani, a French citizen who worked for HSBC’s Swiss private bank and in 2008 disclosed details on thousands of clients he suspected were using accounts to evade tax.
India expects to receive the data from Swiss authorities in about 10 days, the country’s Finance minister, Piyush Goyal, told local media outlet Times of India.
“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,” Goyal said.
Goyal said the HSBC list was released somewhere in the year 2010-11 and ever since the government has made efforts confirm those details but claimed to be stalled by the Swiss government from getting any information.
The authorities in Switzerland refused to collaborate claiming bank secrecy and that the list was illegal since it was stolen.
As regards Panama Papers, the Indian minister said it had 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.”
India has launched a crackdown on tax dodging as money parked by Indians in Swiss Banks rose 50% to CHF 1.02 billion (Rs 7,000 crore) in 2017 over the previous year, according to he latest data from the Swiss National Bank.
