26 Is India poor, who says ? Ask Swiss banks
With personal account deposit bank of $ 1500 billion in
foreign reserve which have been misappropriated, an amount 13 times larger than
the country’s foreign debt, one needs to rethink if India is a poor country ?
Dishonest industrialists, scandalous politicians and corrupt
IAS, IRS, IPS officers have deposited in foreign banks in their illegal personal
accounts a sum of about $ 1500 billion, which have been misappropriated by them.
This amount is about 13 times larger than the country’s foreign debt. With this
amount 45 crore poor people can get Rs.1,00,000 each. This huge amount has been
appropriated from the people of India by exploiting and betraying them.
Once this huge amount of black money and property comes back
to India , the entire foreign debt can be repaid in 24 hours. After paying the
entire foreign debt, we will have surplus amount, almost 12 times larger than
the foreign debt. If this surplus amount is invested in earning interest, the
amount of interest will be more than the annual budget of the Central
Government. So even if all the taxes are abolished, then also the Central
Government will be able to maintain the country very comfortably.
Some 80,000 people travel to Switzerland every year, of whom
25,000 travel very frequently. “Obviously, these people won’t be tourists. They
must be travelling there for some other reason,” believes an official involved
in tracking illegal money. And, clearly, he isn’t referring to the Commerce
Ministry bureaucrats who’ve been flitting in and out of Geneva ever since the
World Trade Organisation (WTO) negotiations went into a tailspin !
Just read the following details and note how these dishonest
industrialists, scandalous politicians, corrupt officers, cricketers, film
actors, illegal sex trade and protected wildlife operators, to name just a few,
sucked this country’s wealth and prosperity. This may be the picture of deposits
in Swiss banks only. What about other international banks ?
Black money in Swiss banks — Swiss Banking Association
report, 2006 details bank deposits in the territory of Switzerland by nationals
of the following countries : Top five
India … … … $ 1,456 billion
Russia … … … $ 470 billion
UK … … … $ 390 billion
Ukraine … … … $ 100 billion
China … … … $ 96 billion
Now do the maths — India with $ 1456 billion or $ 1.4
trillion has more money in Swiss banks than rest of the world combined. Public
loot since 1947 : Can we bring back our money ? It is one of the biggest loots
witnessed by mankind — the loot of the Aam Aadmi (common man) since 1947,
by his brethren occupying public office. It has been orchestrated by
politicians, bureaucrats and some businessmen.
The list is almost all-encompassing. No wonder, everyone in
India loots with impunity and without any fear. What is even more depressing is
that this ill-gotten wealth of ours has been stashed away abroad into secret
bank accounts located in some of the world’s best known tax havens. And to that
extent the Indian economy has been stripped of its wealth. Ordinary Indians may
not be exactly aware of how such secret accounts operate and what are the rules
and regulations that go on to govern such tax havens. However, one may well be
aware of ‘Swiss bank accounts,’ the shorthand for murky dealings, secrecy and of
course pilferage from developing countries into rich developed ones.
In March 2005, the Tax Justice Network (TJN) published a
research finding demonstrating that $ 11.5 trillion of personal wealth was held
offshore by rich individuals across the globe. The findings estimated that a
large proportion of this wealth was managed from some 70 tax havens.
Further, augmenting these studies of TJN, Raymond Baker — in
his widely celebrated book titled ‘Capitalism’s Achilles Heel : Dirty Money and
How to Renew the Free Market System’ — estimates that at least $ 5 trillion have
been shifted out of poorer countries to the West since the mid-1970.
It is further estimated by experts that one per cent of the
world’s population holds more than 57% of total global wealth, routing it
invariably through these tax havens. How much of this is from India is anybody’s
guess.
What is to be noted here is that most of the wealth of
Indians parked in these tax havens is illegitimate money acquired through
corrupt means. Naturally, the secrecy associated with the bank accounts in such
places is central to the issue, not their low tax rates as the term ‘tax havens’
suggests. Remember Bofors and how India could not trace the ultimate beneficiary
of those transactions because of the secrecy associated with these bank
accounts ?
