Click to play videoNew Delhi: The Swiss government is willing to share information about the bank accounts of Indian tax evaders after the representatives of both countries meet in Geneva in December to revise their double taxation treaty.
Switzerland’s Ambassador to India Phillipe Welti said this to CNN-IBN in an interview. “What the Indian side can expect is that once we--Indian and Swiss government--have agreed on a possible change in the existing treaty that Switzerland will implement the treaty in spirit and letter of what is decided upon,” said Welti to CNN-IBN’s Sumon K Chakrabarti.
“More precisely then the Indian government is entitled to submit requests for the purpose (of seeking bank account details). The Swiss government will be entitled to examine those requests. If those requests fit in to the provisions agreed upon then the release of data will be possible,” he said.
The US reached an agreement with Switzerland in August 2009, under which banking major UBS would furnish details of 4,450 secret accounts to the American authorities. But Swiss officials had then expressed their inability to have a similar arrangement with India.
Swiss laws do not permit fishing expeditions, in other words, the indiscriminate trawling through bank accounts in the hope of finding something interesting, a senior official of the Swiss Bankers Association had said in August.
“This means that India cannot simply throw its telephone book at Switzerland and ask if any of these people have a bank account here," SBA's Head of International Communications James Nason had said.
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