Berne/New Delhi: Under pressure from India and other countries, Switzerland has made key changes in its local laws governing assistance to foreign nations in their pursuit of black money allegedly stashed in Swiss banks.
These amendments, which have come into force in August, would allow India and other countries to make “group requests” for information about suspected black money hoarders, while Swiss authorities would not give prior intimation to suspected individuals or entities before sharing their details.
However, the onus would be on India (or any other requesting nation) to establish that any prior intimation to the account holders before information exchange would defeat the “purpose of the administrative assistance” and the success of investigation would be thwarted.
The Swiss laws provide that the person concerned would get a prior intimation of any such international assistance and he or she is also given an opportunity to appeal against this decision and inspect the files before being transmitted to the requesting nation.
Meanwhile, In its effort to unearth black money stashed away abroad, India has received data on over 24,000 instances of alleged tax evasion and dubious funds which has been detected in foreign shores in the last financial year.
The bulk of the information has been received from New Zealand, followed by Spain, the United Kingdom, Sweden and Denmark.
