Govt checking if any blackmoney returned to India: Revenue Secy

Mumbai: In the wake of deposits held by Indians in Swiss banks dropping by 33 percent, Revenue Secretary Hasmukh Adhia on Friday said the government is checking if any of the blackmoney has been routed back to India.

Noting the fall in money by Indians in Swiss banks as a positive, Hasmukh said the data indicates that government's steps to recover blackmoney are in the right direction.

At the same time, he observed that the government and the income tax department are continuously working to detect blackmoney and are making efforts to track down any such funds that have returned to India.

"If money has returned or routed back into India, we (government and agencies) are taking steps to track it," Adhia told reporters here.

Money held by Indians in Swiss banks has fallen by nearly one-third to a record low of 1.2 billion franc (about Rs 8,392 crore) amid a continuing global clampdown on the famed secrecy wall of Switzerland's banking system.

The funds held by Indians with banks in Switzerland fell by CHF 596.42 million to CHF 1,217.6 million at the end of 2015, as per the latest data released yesterday by the country's central banking authority SNB (Swiss National Bank).

This is the lowest amount of funds held by Indians in the Swiss banks ever since the Alpine nation began making the data public in 1997 and marks the second straight year of decline. The funds held by Indians with Swiss banks stood at a record high of CHF 6.5 billion (Rs 23,000 crore) at 2006-end.

The latest data comes at a time when Switzerland has begun sharing foreign client details on evidence of wrongdoing provided by India and other countries.

Briefing the media on government talks with Swiss authorities, the Revenue Secretary said Switzerland has agreed for automatic sharing of information from 2018.

"Some days ago, I had a dialogue with my counterpart from Switzerland and they have agreed to automatically share information from 2018.

"This means we would receive every detail of the money deposited by our citizens in the Swiss banks," Adhia said.

A number of strategies have been deployed by the government to combat the stash-funds menace, in both overseas and domestic domain, which include enactment of a new law to tackle stashing of black money abroad, amendments in the anti-money laundering Act and compliance windows for people to declare their hidden assets.