India receives first tranche of Swiss account details of its residents

New Delhi: Switzerland on Monday confirmed that India has received information regarding the accounts held by Indian residents in the central European country. The first list of account holders was received in September 2019 for the year 2018 under the Automatic Exchange Of Information (AEOI) on tax matters. AEOI was signed by both the countries in November 2016.

The Swiss government gave account information of the account holders which includes  their names, addresses and account balance to the Indian government. India will now receive the information automatically every year.

The Swiss federal department of finance in a press release said, "Federal Tax Administration (FTA) has exchanged information on financial accounts with 75 countries."

The Swiss finance department confirmed to WION that the list of 75 countries includes India, however, on the number of accounts whose details have been given to the Indian government, the department said, "Communication of statistical data is subject to the confidentiality clauses."

Swiss government shared the information of 3.1 million financial accounts to 75 countries and received information on 2.4 million of them on a reciprocal basis. The largest exchange was with Germany.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led NDA government's main focus has been to take strong action on black money issue and the automatic exchange of information is a boost to measures taken by it in the last few years.