by Harish Gupta, National Editor, Lokmat Group
After being a sandbag and facing blows
from the Congress and, notably, a troublesome ideological ally like lawyer Ram
Jethmalani, for allegedly pussy-footing to disclose the names of Indians with
unaccounted wealth in foreign banks, the Narendra Modi government is finally
ready to take the gloves off. From a well-timed TV interview of Finance
Minister Arun Jaitley, it seems obvious that the government has completed the
process of framing charges against about 15-18 persons whose names were passed
on to it by the Swiss banking authorities as part of the so-called “HSBC Geneva
list”. The UPA government apparently used India
The parade of names may be even longer
as it adds the 19 names that German authorities obtained through a covert
operation from LGT, the biggest bank of the Alpine principality of Liechtenstein
The “HSBC Geneva list” above is sifted
from the 782 Indian names that came from Switzerland US , to lift the veil of
secrecy on their accounts following the 9/11 terror attacks in America
Therefore, with the banks of
Switzerland being the traditional lodestone of black money worldwide, the
amount claimed by the Swiss (and unquestioningly exhibited by the UPA Government
in a White Paper) as Indians’ share in its vaults was chicken feed. Meanwhile,
in 2009, Jethmalani and others had filed a writ petition before the
Supreme Court seeking the court’s direction to recover the black money stashed
abroad. Vexed by the UPA government’s systematic non-cooperation, the court
decided to form its own Special Investigation Team (SIT) into Indian black
money abroad. The UPA government, surprisingly, challenged this order through
an interlocutory application. The matter, which went before a two-judge bench,
got a split verdict and is waiting to be referred to a third judge. But before
the issue could be settled, Modi government set up the SIT as desired by the SC
on its own. Even the UPA had blinked under the court and had handed over to the
Supreme Court 26 names of Indian account holders in the Liechtenstein
bank. Now that the NDA would file the chargesheet in most of the cases, the
names can be legally disclosed.
Modi needs to
sanitize the entire
economy with a large broom.
The excitement over imminent
disclosure of VIP names in the illegal foreign account scandal will rightly
grab the headlines. But it is only a small side bar in the larger picture of
corruption which, according to some estimates, is about a fourth of the GDP. So
pervasive is the popular anger against corruption, particularly in public life,
that almost every election is decided on the incumbent being seen as corrupt.
Besides, the network of corruption stretches from the very big to the ordinary,
from a billion-dollar defense purchase to the allotment of small government flat
to a Chief Minister’s favorite. Till the 2G telecom spectrum and coal block
allocation scams in the recent years, there was not even much public awareness
about how and why (in exchange of what) are natural resources allocated by
elected governments. Even now, the auctioning of resources is neither complete
nor perfect and transparency is sadly lacking in most sectors of governance.
Post 9/11, the US government introduced the Patriot Act which made it mandatory
for any transaction by an American, or with an American, beyond a threshold
figure to be instantly reported to the law enforcement agencies. Where is such
a law in India India
If some big shots are caught with
their ill-gotten cash in foreign banks, they surely deserve to be punished. But
to fight corruption, it is the entire economy that needs to be sanitized. That
needs a really large broom.
(The author is
National Editor,
Lokmat
group)
