Government moving a step forward in fighting the menace of black money stashed in offshore accounts, will be signing an agreement with Switzerland to expedite pending information requests on Indians with Swiss bank accounts, while an automatic exchange of details would begin in 2018. Once this agreement is signed, it will be possible for India to receive from 2018 financial information of accounts held by Indian residents in Switzerland on automatic basis.
Revenue Secretary Hasmukh Adhia following up on Prime Minister Narendra Modi's meeting with Swiss President Johann Schneider-Ammann at Geneva on June 6, met Switzerland's State Secretary for International Financial Matters Jacques de Watteville, to discuss speedy bilateral implementation of Agreement for Automatic Exchange of Information (AEOI). The agreement is likely to be signed by end of this year and once it is signed India will receive financial information of accounts held by Indian residents in Switzerland on automatic basis from 2018.
Besides, experts of both the countries will meet by mid-September 2016 to further discuss the modalities for the reciprocal bilateral implementation of AEOI between India and Switzerland with a view to reaching an agreement at the earliest, possibly by the end of the year. In a joint statement after the meeting, the two sides said they agreed that regular contacts will facilitate a common understanding of each other's concerns so as to ensure that the requests are dealt with quickly and efficiently.
On requests based on what Switzerland considers as data obtained in breach of Swiss law, Adhia reaffirmed India's position that Switzerland should share information in all cases in accordance with the treaty and 'noted the progress made in a number of Indian requests based on investigations carried out independently of the 'stolen data'.' Besides, the meeting assumes significance in the wake of the recent publication of leaked 'Panama Papers' where voluminous information on offshore accounts has been placed in the public domain, including of hundreds of Indians.
