Indian money in Swiss Banks saw significant yearly decline

In his bid to bring down the Modi government, Rahul Gandhi resorted to cheap and baseless lies in the parliament. However, his antics failed to bear any fruits and he was royally humiliated by France. France released a statement countering Rahul’s lies regarding the Rafale deal.

And barely 5 days after France released a statement countering Rahul’s desperate lies regarding the Rafale deal, Swiss National Bank decided that it had had enough as well

The latest report from Switzerland’s central banking authority, the Swiss National Bank (SNB) lays to rest all the baseless claims by the opposition on the failure of the government to curb black money deposits. The SNB on Tuesday said that the inflated figures of CHF 1.01 billion (about Rs 7,000 crore) are for total deposits made by the Indian customers which includes banks and enterprises. This figure had been wrongly showcased by the Congress and other opposition parties to show a 50% surge in India’s black money deposits in the Swiss banks. The SNB further went on to say that the figure of Rs 7,000 crore includes “data from branches of Swiss banks in India” which are maintained by banks and industries. It is also important to know that there in only one Swiss bank, Credit Suisse which has a branch in India while two others, UBS and Zurcher Kantonal Bank operate through a representative according to the Reserve Bank of India data till January 31, 2018. Finance Minister Piyush Goyal on Tuesday too had claimed that the Indian deposits in Swiss banks had actually fallen down by 34.5 percent from last year as per the data from Bank for International Settlements (BIS).

Prime Minister Narendra Modi led central government had started a crackdown on black money since the party came to power in 2014. Demonetisation, GST implementation and numerous steps to counter tax evasion had been taken to ensure strangling of the black money flow. The mainstream media which is dominated by the left in our country had tried to show a negative image of the steps which were taken and have even tried to downplay the effects it had on black money. Congress President Rahul Gandhi had sometimes led and sometimes followed suit the media houses in targeting the PM Modi led government for its alleged failure in curbing the menace of black money in Swiss banks. The statements made by the Swiss authorities clear all clouds over the ground reality of black money deposits made and maintained by Indians.

A couple of weeks earlier, SNB’s annual publication, banks in Switzerland had claimed that there was a rise in Indian money deposited in Swiss banks in 2017 after it had fallen continuously for the past three years. This point had been picked up and twisted by the leftist cabal and media without knowing that the figures for 2017 in fact included the deposits made by the Indian banks and industries and was not even closely related to the unaccounted black money deposits which exist in the modern day. Finance Minister Piyush Goyal too told the Rajya Sabha during Question Hour that upon discussing the issue with Swiss authorities, he had gotten a written reply from them explaining that the media reports “have not taken account of the way the (SNB) figures have to be interpreted.”

Piyush Goyal further went on to add that according to the Swiss authorities, locational banking statistics (LBS) of the BIS are a more reliable data source for getting an estimate of black money deposits made by a country’s individuals. FM Goyal said that the non-bank loans and deposits which constitute the individual and corporate deposits had indeed fallen by 34.5% in 2017 to $524 million as compared to $800 million in 2016. As per the BIS website, the ‘amount outstanding’ towards non-bank loans and deposits of Indians in Swiss banks stood at $94.84 million (Rs 653 crore) at the end of 2017, which is down nearly 44 percent from $168.13 million (Rs 1,158 crore) at 2016 end. This figure seems to have marginally risen to $100.88 million (Rs 695 crore) at the end of March 2018.

Apart from all this, one statement by the Swiss government explains all the hoopla created by the opposition and media in India. The statement reads, “More often than not, the reports have not taken account of the way the figures have to be interpreted, which has resulted in misleading analyses” and it is frequently assumed that any assets held by Indian residents in Switzerland are undeclared or so-called ‘black money’ which is not the case in any way. It also added that, “The information also includes accounts that would be closed during 2018. Accordingly, assets held by Indian residents in Switzerland cannot be considered as ‘black money’.”

The statements made by the Swiss government show that FM Piyush Goyal was absolutely right in claiming that the government has succeeded in clamping down on black money. All the efforts by the opposition to malign the government and India’s global image have now gone down the drain. The so called ‘intellectuals’ will suddenly go quiet on this issue and will look for new issues to twist and distort them in the days to come, which shows that the government indeed is succeeding in its goal to curb the menace of black money.