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Black money & rupee fall- Modi government once again under criticism

Yesterday’s news channels buzzed with two main topics- one the fall in the value of Rupee, and the second the rise of money in the Swiss accounts.

This topic has the Opposition at the Modi government’s door.

The Congress and other opposition parties on Friday targeted Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his government over his claims of bringing back black money stashed abroad after deposits of Indians in Swiss banks surged.

Taking a swipe at PM Modi, Congress president Rahul Gandhi said that under the NDA rule, alleged scamsters such as Nirav Modi and Vijay Mallya fled the country with public money.

BJP Rajya Sabha MP Subramanian Swamy has hit out at the government for its failure in curbing generation of black money.

Writing on his Twitter handle, Swamy said,

The Congress in a tweet said, “One of PM Modi’s long-standing campaign promises of bringing back black money falls flat. While you sit and wait for your promised Rs 15 lakh, more capital has flown the coop.”

Senior Congress leader and former Union minister Manish Tewari also hit out at the Centre.

Earlier in the day, finance minister Piyush Goyal wondered how all the money parked by Indians in Swiss banks could be assumed to be black money while asserting that strong action would be taken against anyone found guilty of wrongdoing.

India would get the details of bank accounts from Switzerland under a bilateral treaty, he said.

READ ALSO: You won’t believe India’s debt condition right now!

Finance minister Arun Jaitley warned that Indians having illegal deposits in Swiss banks would face harsh penal proceedings under the black money law after Switzerland starts real-time sharing of details of accounts from January onwards.

“A news item has appeared today indicating an increase of money by ‘Indians’ in the Swiss banking system. This has led to a misinformed reaction in certain circles raising a query whether the government’s anti-black money steps have yielded results,” Jaitley said in his blog.

Attacking Modi, Rahul Gandhi tweeted,

HOW MUCH IS THE RISE?

Money parked by Indians in Swiss banks rose over 50 per cent to 1.01 billion Swiss franc (Rs 7,000 crore) in 2017. This was against a three-year downward trend and comes amid India’s clampdown on suspected black money stashed in Switzerland.

In comparison, the total funds held by all foreign clients of Swiss banks rose about 3 per cent to 1.46 trillion Swiss francs or about Rs 100 lakh crore in 2017, according to the official annual data released today by Swiss National Bank (SNB), the central banking authority of the Alpine nation.

The surge in Indian money held with Swiss banks comes as a surprise given India’s continuing clampdown on suspected black money stashed abroad, including in banks of Switzerland that used to be known for their famed secrecy walls for years.

The Indian money in Swiss banks had fallen by 45 per cent in 2016, marking their biggest ever yearly plunge, to 676 million Swiss francs (about Rs 4,500 crore) — the lowest ever since the European nation began making the data public in 1987.

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