Govt stalled move on Swiss banks, says BJP

Arun Shourie, senior leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), today alleged that the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government had shot down a move that could have unravelled some of the names of Indians having secret deposits in Swiss banks.

He alleged that the finance ministry had written to the Indian ambassador in Berlin that he need not press for seeking the names of Indian depositors in the list obtained by the German government from a Swiss Bank last year

Speaking to mediapersons, Shourie, a former minister and member of the party’s think tank on economic issues, said that after BJP leader L K Advani wrote to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in April 2008 about the need to pursue the matter with the German government, “we were alarmed to learn that a senior official of the finance ministry had written to the then Indian Ambassador in Germany not to press the Germans for release of the names of Indians in the list that they had obtained from Liechtenstein.”