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Swiss Account Holders
The CBI has launched a probe into the swindling of more than 2 lakh Swiss francs (around Rs 2 crore) at India's Permanent Mission in Geneva by a former accounts officer posted there, who allegedly siphoned the amount to bankroll his crypto-gambling ventures, officials said. Mohit, who joined the Permanent Mission in Geneva on December 17, 2024, as an assistant section officer, was given the responsibility to physically submit payment instructions to the Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS), where the accounts of the Mission are maintained in US dollars (USD) and Swiss francs (CHF), they said. The discrepancy was detected in the CHF account. The Mission made payments to Swiss vendors in CHF based on their invoices, which carried pre-printed QR codes having the vendor's bank and invoice details coded in them. The physical copy of the QR codes, along with payment instruction slips signed by the Attache (Admin and Establishment) and DDO Tushar Lakra, is submitted to the UBS to make the ...
Funds parked by Indian individuals and firms in Swiss banks, including through local branches and other financial institutions, fell sharply by 70 per cent in 2023 to a four-year low of 1.04 billion Swiss Francs (Rs 9,771 crore), annual data from Switzerland's central bank showed on Thursday. The decline in aggregate funds of Indian clients with Swiss banks for the second consecutive year, after hitting a 14-year-high of CHF 3.83 billion in 2021, was largely driven by a sharp plunge in funds held through bonds, securities and various other financial instruments. Besides, the amount in customer deposit accounts and funds held through other bank branches in India also declined significantly, the data showed. These are official figures reported by banks to the Swiss National Bank (SNB) and do not indicate the quantum of the much-debated alleged black money held by Indians in Switzerland. These figures also do not include the money that Indians, NRIs or others might have in Swiss banks
India has received the fourth set of Swiss bank account details of its nationals and organisations as part of an annual automatic information exchange under which Switzerland has shared particulars of nearly 34 lakh financial accounts with 101 countries. Officials said the new details shared with India pertain to "hundreds of financial accounts", including many cases of multiple accounts associated with some individuals, corporates and trusts. They did not divulge specifics, citing the confidentiality clause of the information exchange and the adverse impact it may have on further investigations, but asserted that the data would be used extensively in probes of suspected tax evasion and other wrong doings including of money laundering and terror funding. In a statement, the Federal Tax Administration (FTA) on Monday said that the exchange of information this year saw five new additions to the list -- Albania, Brunei Darussalam, Nigeria, Peru and Turkey. The count of financial ...