SC to hear plea regarding 70 lakh crore money in Swiss banks

Former Union Law Minister Ram Jethmalani, former Punjab DGP K P S Gill and four others today approached the Supreme Court seeking probe into huge public money, believed to be around Rs 70 lakh crore, stashed away in Swiss banks. The respondents include the Union Government, RBI, SEBI, Director of the Directorate of Enforcement and Chairman of the Central Board of Direct Taxes. The petitioners, who include Professor B B Dutta, Jalbala Vaidya, Subhash Kashyap, former Secretary General of Lok Sabha Secretariat and Gopal Sharma, formed an NGO Citizen India. According to the petitioners, around 1.4 billion dollars of public funds, looted by influential politicians belonging to all political parties, was illegally stashed away to Swiss banks and the government had made no serious efforts to bring back the money to India. The petitioners also prayed to the apex court to freeze all accounts, held by Indians in the UBS, the world’s biggest wealth management company based in Switzerland. They cited the example of the US, where the country started investigation into the money illegally stashed in Swiss banks by Americans. On February 18, 2009 the UBS agreed to reveal the details, of those who were having accounts in the bank and 780 million dollars came to the notice of the US government. They prayed to the apex court to direct the respondents to conduct investigation expeditiously and not to allow them to delay it unnecessarily. The petition is likely to come up for hearing during the mentioning tomorrow. It was also prayed to bring to book all those, who have fraudulently stashed away public money by committing daylight dacoity of public money, which in fact belongs to the people of India. According to the petitioner, the Union Finance Ministry showed no interest in exposing influential politicians, belonged to almost all big political parties, who were having foreign bank accounts to hide their ill-gotten money. Recently, media reports revealed that Indians topped the list of those having secret bank accounts in Swiss banks and India had maximum money amounting to about 1.4 billion dollars, approximately Rs 70 lakh crore, and if the money was brought back to India, every village in the country could get around 12 crore each. The petitioners urged the apex court to direct the Union Government to reveal the entire information it has pertaining to Swiss bank accounts and not to surpass anything. They also alleged that the UBS was involved in the 2004 stock market crash in India and demanded that the government should take immediate steps to bring back the public money, which was mainly stashed away fraudulently between 2002 and 2006.

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