Indian team visits Swiss on black money - Fusion - WeRIndia

A team of Indian officials will be visiting Switzerland soon in order to seek action on requests of information from Indians who are saving illegal black money with banks there. Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently met with Swiss leadership and this team will be following up that visit.

India and Switzerland are also planning on an agreement which would help with automatic exchange of information from 2018.

After the meeting of PM Modi with Swiss President Johann Schneider-Ammann in Geneva, a meeting was held between high-level delegation from Switzerland and top finance ministry officials of India. The meeting focused on wide ranging bilateral and multilateral tax and financial issues.

Swiss state secretary for international financial matters, Jacques de Watteville said in his meetings with revenue secretary Hasmukh Adhia and economic affairs secretary Shaktikanta Das that Swiss has formed the necessary legal bases to support automatic exchange of information (AEOI). He said that a bilateral agreement can be reached by the end of this year.

After the agreement is signed, there will be transfer of financial information on Indian residents account in Switzerland banks automatically. A statement from finance ministry said that solving the problem of black money in offshore accounts has been a key priority for the government.

There will be another meeting of experts of both the countries by mid-September 2016 to further discuss the modalities in the implementation of AEOI between India and Switzerland. Both countries are aiming to reach an agreement as early as possible.

A joint statement from both countries said that they agreed that regular contacts creates a common understanding of each other’s concerns which helps requests to be dealt quickly.

A team of officers from India will soon be visiting Switzerland for bilateral discussions and to form a quick resolution of pending requests of exchange of information.

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