Switzerland likely to share HSBC accounts data in 10 days: Goyal

Finance Minister Piyush Goyal on Tuesday said that Swiss government is likely to share the HSBC accounts data in about 10 days, after the Supreme Court of Switzerland ordered it to share data with India.

"The Supreme Court of Switzerland has ordered the Swiss government to share with us the data. In about a week or 10 days, that is going to get formalised," Goyal informed the Rajya Sabha during Question Hour.

He said that HSBC list was released somewhere in the year 2010-11, and from 2011-12 till 2014, the government kept trying to make an effort but was stalled by the Swiss government from getting any information on the ground that this is a secret information.

"It is only after this government came in that we sent our Revenue Secretary to Switzerland. We had high-level discussions with the government of Switzerland and a joint statement was issued in October 2014, in which both sides agreed that they will share information with each other and since then we have started getting information on the HSBC accounts from Switzerland," he said.

Responding to supplementaries, he said with regard to HSBC, the already undisclosed income of Rs 8,448 crore has been brought to tax.

"The tax demand of Rs 5,447 crore has been raised and a penalty of Rs 1,290 crore levied in 164 cases so far. 199 prosecution complaints have been filed in 84 cases," he said.

On Panama Papers, he said, it contains details of 426 persons. "Investigations are going on in all the cases. So far, 62 invasive actions have been conducted which included search, seizure action in 50 cases and survey action in 12 cases."

Goyal said that criminal prosecution complaints have been filed in 16 cases and in 33 cases, notices under Section 10 of the Black Money Act have been issued.

"As an outcome of these investigations so far, undisclosed foreign investments to the tune of Rs 1,542.88 crore has been detected ... and the investigations continue," he said.

The Minister said that it was only under this government that the people have started increasingly filing their returns.

"The number of tax filers has increased by over 50 per cent in the last four years and the quantum of income-tax collected has also increased by about 75 per cent in the last four years. It has also stopped the leakages that were happening previously," he said.

He said the Modi government has given almost Rs 4 lakh crore to the poor in their bank accounts through direct benefit transfer.

The Minister refuted that the IMF has reduced India's growth projections and said that the country is slated to grow at a robust 7.3 per cent this year, 7.5 per cent next year and it will continue to be the world's fastest growing large economy in the world for the next two years.

--IANS

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