At a news conference in London on Monday WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was handed two CDs with details of secret accounts held by tax evaders from several countries, including India, by former Swiss banker Rudolf Elmer.
“Assange and WikiLeaks are the best hope we have of getting at who and how much is involved,” said Vineet Narain, one of India’s best known campaigners against the country’s vast “black” or parallel economy, which feeds into the international secret accounts system.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange holds a CD during a press conference at the Frontline club in London, on Monday. An offshore banking whistleblower on Monday personally handed WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange two CDs reportedly containing the names of 2,000 bank clients who may have been evading taxes. AFP
Narain said two decades of campaigning against the system, that includes obtaining landmark rulings against corruption from the Supreme Court, had taught him that none of the major political parties is serious about a system which enables the elite to spirit away large sums of money and stash them in tax havens.
In a report released in November 2010 the Washington-based Centre for International Policy (CIP) estimated that an average of 19.3 billion dollars leaves India each year. Since independence from British colonial rule in 1947 India has lost 462 billion dollars by a “conservative estimate”, the report said.
Singh is under pressure to act over numerous instances of corruption surfacing in recent months, but he told media on Wednesday that disclosing details of the secret accounts would violate international treaties on double taxation. “The information will not be made public. It will be a violation of the treaties.
“There are no instant solutions to bringing back what is called black money. We have got some information and that has been provided to us for use in the collection of taxes,” Singh added.
Singh’s plea of helplessness has cut no ice with the Supreme Court which is hearing a public interest litigation on large nest eggs, possibly running into trillions of dollars, illegally maintained abroad by Indians.
Zurich/ New Delhi: India has slipped to 70th position in terms of foreign money lying with Swiss banks and accounts for a meagre 0.10 per cent of total global wealth held in the country’s banking system.
While much hue and cry is made over huge amounts of illicit wealth stashed by Indians in Swiss banks, the latest official data released by Switzerland’s central bank shows that the money they owed to Indian clients at the end of last year was 1.42 billion Swiss francs (aboutRs. 9,000 crore).
While the UK continues to account for the largest chunk of such funds, India has now slipped lower to 70th position – the lowest rank among all major economies of the world, shows an analysis of annual data released by Swiss National Bank (SNB) on all the banks present in the European country(NDTV June 23,2013)
Do not for a moment feel elated as the money might have been shifted to Caribbean offshore account.!
I have a Post on this
Please read my blog on Rajiv Gandhi 2.5 Billion Francs under corruption.
Figures in the story,does it include Rajiv’s?
I can not count the zeroes.
Story:
The revised Tax treaty between India and Switzerland which will be placed before the Swiss Parliament for final approval is creating nightmares to those tax evaders who have cheated tax to the tune of Billions of Rupees.
(Weak heart people may skip the below paragraphJ)
It is believed that an astonishing sum of around 1400 Billion dollars of black money is deposited in Swiss banks by the Indian Tax evaders. This amount is equivalent to 6300000,00,00,000 INR which is about 13 times larger than the country’s foreign debt !!!!
Now there arisen a ray of hope to pull through this black money from these banks as the Switzerland’s Parliamentary Committee has given the go-ahead to the revised tax treaty between India and Switzerland that would eventually allow our government to access the secret Swiss bank accounts of Indian tax evaders.
The extremely stable economy, privacy and good returns on the investment have made people across the globe to deposit their money in the Swiss Banks. It is often misapprehended by many of us that the term SWISS BANK is a single bank, which is not the case. There are more than 400 banks in Switzerland ranging from two very big banks to small banks. Union Bank of Switzerland (USB) and Swiss Bank Corporation are the two biggest banks in Swiss of which the branches have spread across many continents.
It has become clear to the Supreme Court that the looters are preparing the grounds for the cover-up If Wikileaks exposes Indian accounts in Swiss Bank.The looters over a period of time digesting, scam after scam have become immune to public opinion. They have developed a skin so thick, that it would make a Rhino blush.
Even if Wikileaks and Rudolf Elmer publish all the names of the illegal Indian account holders in Julius Baer, and the other Swiss Banks follow suit, nailing the looters is a far cry. These accounts will have been masked by layer upon layer of bogus legal entities. The looters are sure to have taken all these precautions to ensure that the trail does not lead to them. This is more than sufficient excuse for the Indian investigating agencies, controlled and directed by the looters themselves. The ‘Bofors Loot’ scam investigation is an eye-opener.
Who knows , they might have had, or still have ,not Radia or some other Kedia?
In the melee there is a chorus for making ‘Lobbying ‘ legal under guide lines, justifying on the ground that is being done in US.
Ask ordinary citizens of US.They are being ruled by sanctioned clique.
Healthy discussions in Parliament on any important national business/policy are enough.What else is Parliament for?Just to get licence to steal?
Unfortunately you can not steal openly.
Story
“Public anger won’t die down unless the State stops selling itself to corporate interests”
“First, Radia is a lobbyist for some of the largest and most powerful companies in India, but lobbyists exist in every free market economy. It is also true Radia cultivated politicians, journalists and industry leaders to persuade them of the reasonableness of her clients’ requests and to intercede on their behalf with ministers and senior officials. But that too was her legitimate function. The tapes have revealed that she lobbied powerful journalists to help her, and many, though not all, agreed. But journalists have acted as intermediaries on important issues before.”
It cannot even be claimed that A Raja’s indiscriminate allocation of 2G licences did only harm to the country.
Because the fact is that the past six years have seen not only an exponential growth of mobile telephony but also a level of competition among service providers that has brought down the price of phone calls to levels unheard of anywhere else in the world. If we have not heard more about this aspect, it is because the beneficiaries have been the unorganised and unregistered poor.
So, why is India in such turmoil? The answer lies in the cosy relationships within the power elite that the tapes revealed and the fact that none of the people involved were acting in national interest. Radia was not canvassing for a particular policy. She was canvassing for the appointment of a particular person to a particular cabinet post in UPA 2. She was not doing it on behalf of the DMK but for two of the nation’s biggest companies who happen to be facing an oligopolistic telecom market in which most of the business has been cornered by two of their older rivals.
By the same token, while journalists have been part of track-two communications (overt or covert) between Delhi and Tehran, Islamabad and insurgent groups, the common feature was that this was done in national interest. This is something that the journalists who promised to intercede on Raja’s behalf cannot claim.
In what may not go down well with the BJP leadership, Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot today said that former vice-president Bhairon Singh Shekhawat has written a letter to him seeking a probe into the alleged corruption cases during the previous Vasundhara Raje regime.
All the Raja’s men (L- R) Sadiq Batcha, owner of Green House; Jegath Gasper Raj (in yellow shirt); and the media outside Raja’s Delhi house
Precisely the reason Congress is cheesed off publicly and DMK in private.
Raja seems to have taken more than 10% initially agreed upon.
The covenant was 60 to Sonia Gandhi, 30 to Karunanidhi and 10 to Raja.( Swamy’s statement)
Congress is wary of taking strict action as the cat will be out of the bag.
DMK is waiting for alliance with Congress.
If it comes through Raja will be dumped; else Raja will be portrayed as a ‘Dalit’ and a ‘victim of Dravidian Aryan conspiracy’.
Raja ran his empire through proxy. To ensure his directors didn’t take their roles too seriously, he got advance undated resignations from them….
As the CBI puts the jigsaw puzzle together, it finds Raja had set up front companies well before the spectrum allocation: a mix of hawala channels, realty firms, NGOs, family trusts and export firms ensuring safe passage for the spoils of politics. For this, he established contact with NRIs, audit firms in Malaysia and local companies in Chennai, Perambalur, Trichy, and Coimbatore. With easy money flowing in, many became millionaires overnight.
One such man was Sadiq Batcha, who heads several real estate firms in Chennai. Twenty years ago, he was a salesman in Pallapatti village in Salem district, knocking at doors to sell sarees on 10 instalments. Later, he sold radios and tape recorders. Unable to make ends meet, he migrated to Perambalur, where he met AIADMK’s Varathur Arunachalam. This was his stroke of luck, his key to fame and fortune. Arunachalam introduced him to Raja, a small-time DMK politician. Both were ambitious and ready to take risks. It was Raja who told him to venture into real estate. With small investments on both sides, they grew together. Today Batcha’s real estate empire is worth more than Rs. 2,000 crore.
Batcha floated companies one after another with Raja’s close relatives on the board of directors. Chennai-based Green House Promoters, a private limited company set up in 2004 with a seed capital of Rs. 1 lakh, grew exponentially to record a turnover of several hundred crores in a short span. It opened an office in Singapore in 2006. Raja’s wife Parameshwari joined the board in 2007. The Enforcement Directorate issued a notice to the company for Foreign Exchange Management Act violations and the Singapore office was shut down in 2009.
WHILE INTERROGATING RP Paramesh Kumar, the son of Raja’s sister Vijayammal, and joint managing director of Green House Promoters, the CBI has unearthed huge money transfers through export orders. The Enforcement Directorate is probing the possibility of the use of textile and vegetable exporters based in Chennai, Tirupur and Coimbatore to channel the money through hawala operations.
Paramesh Kumar is a common factor in all Raja companies, whose personal and company accounts show large-scale money transactions. But then, all the companies made huge profits within a short span of time — and this happened from 2008 onwards, right when the rest of the world was coping with the global meltdown.
CHENNAI: With Union Minister for Chemicals and Fertilizers M.K. Alagiri showing signs of disquiet at not being able to have his way in the affairs of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, the party leadership is worried about the political fall-out, with the general election only months away.
Mr. Alagiri, who was never comfortable as a Union Minister, spoke to his father and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi a few days ago about his desire to play a greater role in the DMK. Although he was made the organising secretary for the southern zone of the party, Mr. Alagiri resented the fact that his younger brother and Deputy Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, M.K. Stalin, continued to wield influence within the party units in the southern districts.
Developments over the 2G spectrum issue also appear to have agitated Mr. Alagiri, who wanted the party to take a tough line against the former Union Minister for Communications and Information Technology, A. Raja. Mr. Alagiri asked Mr. Karunanidhi to remove Mr. Raja from his post as the DMK’s propaganda secretary, arguing that the party needed to distance itself from the spectrum scam.
“….inaction in this regard may lead to a non-existent undesirable and detrimental notion that India is a soft state and one can meddle with its tax laws with impunity,” the income tax appellate tribunal (ITAT) said in its 98-page order.
NEW DELHI: The Bofors gun deal, signed between the Indian government and the now defunct Swedish arms company AB Bofors 21 years ago, has once again come to haunt the government and politics of this country.
Ottavio Quattrocchi, the Italian businessman accused of being a conduit in the bribes that were alleged to have been paid to facilitate the deal, was detained in Argentina and then subsequently released on bail, much to the embarrassment of Indian investigators who have been on his trail.
Following is the chronology of events in the Bofors howitzer payoff scandal:
March 24, 1986: A $1.4 billion contract between the Indian government and Swedish arms company AB Bofors signed for supply of over 400 155mm howitzers.
April 16, 1987:Swedish Radio claims Bofors paid kickbacks to top Indian politicians and key defence officials to secure the deal.
April 20, 1987: Then Indian prime ministerRajiv Gandhi assures the Lok Sabha that neither was any middleman involved in the deal nor were kickbacks paid.
August 6, 1987: Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) set up under B. Shankaranand to probe into allegations of kickbacks.
February 1988: Indian investigators visit Sweden.
July 18, 1989: JPC report presented to parliament.
November 1989: Rajiv Gandhi loses power as Congress defeated in general elections.
December 26, 1989: Then prime minister V.P. Singh’s government bars Bofors from entering into any defence contract with India.
January 26, 1990: Swiss authorities freeze bank accounts of Svenska and AE Services, who allegedly received unauthorised commissions for the deal.
February 17, 1992: Journalist Bo Anderson’s sensational report on the Bofors payoffs case published.
December 1992: Supreme Court reverses a Delhi High Court decision quashing the complaint in the case.
February 9, 1993: Supreme Court rejects former Bofors agent Win Chadha’s plea for quashing the letters rogatory sent by the trial court to its counterpart in Sweden seeking assistance in the case.
July 12, 1993: Swiss federal court rules that India was entitled to Swiss bank documents pertaining to the kickbacks.
July 29/30 1993: Italian businessman Ottavio Quattrocchi, who was representing Italian fertiliser firm Snam Progetti for several years, leaves India to avoid arrest warrant the CBI was seeking.
January 21, 1997: After four years of legal wrangles, secret documents running into over 500 pages given to Indian authorities at a public ceremony in Berne.
January 30, 1997: CBI constitutes special investigation team for the case.
February 10, 1997: CBI questions ex-army chief General Krishnaswamy Sundarji.
February 12, 1997: Letters rogatory issued to Malaysia and United Arab Emirates (UAE) seeking arrest of Quattrocchi and Win Chadha.
May 1998: Delhi High Court rejects Quattrocchi’s plea for quashing of the ‘red corner’ notice issued by Interpol at the request of CBI.
October 22, 1999: CBI files first chargesheet naming Win Chadha, Quattrocchi, former Indian defence secretary S.K. Bhatnagar, former Bofors chief Martin Ardbo and Bofors company. Former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi’s name figured as “an accused not sent for trial” as he was killed in 1991.
November 7, 1999: Trial court issues arrest warrants against Quattrocchi, while summoning other four accused.
December 13, 1999: CBI team goes to Malaysia to seek extradition of Quattrocchi; fails in its efforts.
Early 2000: Quattrocchi approaches the Supreme Court for quashing of arrest warrant against him. Court asks him to appear before CBI for interrogation while protecting him from being arrested. Quattrocchi refuses to accept the order, saying his counsel misled the court.
March 18, 2000: Chadha comes to India to face trial.
July 29, 2000: Trial court issues “open non-bailable arrest warrants” against Ardbo.
September 4, 2000: Chadha moves Supreme Court for permission to go to Dubai for treatment. Supreme Court rejects plea a week later.
September 29, 2000: Hindujas issue statement in London saying funds received by them from Bofors had no connection with the gun deal.
October 9, 2000: CBI files supplementary chargesheet naming Hinduja brothers as accused in the Bofors gun deal.
December 20, 2000: Quattrocchi arrested in Malaysia, gets bail but is asked to stay within the country.
August 6, 2001: Former defence secretary Bhatnagar dies of cancer.
October 24, 2001: Win Chadha dies of heart attack at his New Delhi residence.
November 15, 2002: Hinduja brothers formally charged with cheating, criminal conspiracy and corruption.
December 2, 2002: Malaysian court denies India’s request for Quattrocchi’s extradition.
July 28, 2003: Acting on India’s request, Britain freezes Quattrocchi’s bank accounts.
January 4, 2004: Swiss authorities agree to consider CBI’s request for providing Quattrocchi’s bank details.
February 4, 2004: Delhi High Court clears Rajiv Gandhi of involvement in the Bofors kickbacks scandal.
May 31, 2005: Delhi High Court clears Hindujas of involvement in the scandal.
Dec 31, 2005: The CBI tells Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), London, that it has not been able to link the money in two accounts of Quattrocchi with the Bofors kickbacks
Jan 7, 2006: Two accounts of Quattrocchi in London banks containing 3 million euros and $1 million were defreezed after then additional solicitor general B. Dutta met the CPS lawyers.
Feb 6, 2007: Quattrocchi detained at Iguazu international airport on an Interpol lookout notice.
Feb 13, 2007: CBI writes to Ministry of External Affairs for Argentinean Extradition Act and tells Interpol Buenos Aires that documentation being prepared for extradition proceedings.
Feb 24, 2007: Fresh warrant of arrest against Quattrocchi obtained from Delhi court
Feb 26, 2007: Quattrochhi released on bail with condition that he does not leave Argentina.
Feb 28, 2007: Two-member CBI team to leave for Argentina.
Asserting that Congress will take corruption head on, Congress President Sonia Gandhi today hailed as inspiring Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s assurance that he will takeforward her five-point action plan to battle the menace.
“We will take corruption head on and demonstrate it through our actions and not through words alone. I had made specific suggestions in this regard (in the speech yesterday) and the prime minister, in his inspiring address this morning, assured us that he will take them forward,” she said in her remarks winding up the two-day Congress plenary here.
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