Switzerland likely to share HSBC accounts data in 10 days: Goyal
New Delhi, Aug 7: Finance Minister Piyush Goyal on Tuesday said that Swiss government is likely to share the HSBC accounts data in about 10 days, after the Supreme Court of Switzerland ordered it to share data with India.
"The Supreme Court of Switzerland has ordered the Swiss government to share with us the data. In about a week or 10 days, that is going to get formalised," Goyal informed the Rajya Sabha during Question Hour.
He said that HSBC list was released somewhere in the year 2010-11, and from 2011-12 till 2014, the government kept trying to make an effort but was stalled by the Swiss government from getting any information on the ground that this is a secret information.
"It is only after this government came in that we sent our Revenue Secretary to Switzerland. We had high-level discussions with the government of Switzerland and a joint statement was issued in October 2014, in which both sides agreed that they will share information with each other and since then we have started getting information on the HSBC accounts from Switzerland," he said.
Responding to supplementaries, he said with regard to HSBC, the already undisclosed income of Rs 8,448 crore has been brought to tax.
"The tax demand of Rs 5,447 crore has been raised and a penalty of Rs 1,290 crore levied in 164 cases so far. 199 prosecution complaints have been filed in 84 cases," he said.
On Panama Papers, he said, it contains details of 426 persons. "Investigations are going on in all the cases. So far, 62 invasive actions have been conducted which included search, seizure action in 50 cases and survey action in 12 cases."
Goyal said that criminal prosecution complaints have been filed in 16 cases and in 33 cases, notices under Section 10 of the Black Money Act have been issued.
"As an outcome of these investigations so far, undisclosed foreign investments to the tune of Rs 1,542.88 crore has been detected ... and the investigations continue," he said.
The Minister said that it was only under this government that the people have started increasingly filing their returns.
"The number of tax filers has increased by over 50 per cent in the last four years and the quantum of income-tax collected has also increased by about 75 per cent in the last four years. It has also stopped the leakages that were happening previously," he said.
He said the Modi government has given almost Rs 4 lakh crore to the poor in their bank accounts through direct benefit transfer.
The Minister refuted that the IMF has reduced India's growth projections and said that the country is slated to grow at a robust 7.3 per cent this year, 7.5 per cent next year and it will continue to be the world's fastest growing large economy in the world for the next two years.
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Two injuries, one DNF, a DQ as India end messy World Relays campaign
Gaborone (Botswana) (PTI): Amoj Jacob and Ragul Kumar got injured during the men's 4x400m and 4x100 races respectively as India ended their World Athletics Relays campaign in disappointment on the second day of competitions here on Sunday.
The Indian camp had high hopes of making the 2027 World Championships in the men's 4x400m relay but the team did not finish (DNF) the race as Jacob suffered cramps and pulled out of the race after taking the baton from the first leg runner Dharamveer Choudhary. Rajesh Ramesh and Vishal TK were to run in the third and fourth legs.
Those teams which could not qualify for the 2027 Beijing World Championships by reaching the final round of each of the six relay events on Saturday were given another chance in the second qualification round on Sunday.
The top two teams in each of the two heats (in all six relay events) booked the Beijing ticket on Sunday.
India will now have to try and qualify for the World Championships through the Top Lists of the World Athletics, which is a long and tedious process.
In the men's 4x100m race, third leg runner Ragul Kumar fell down the track after failing to hand over the baton inside the exchange zone to fourth leg runner Gurindervir Singh, which clearly showed the lack of coordination among the runners.
Harsh Santosh Raut and Animesh Kujur ran the first two legs.
The Indian quartet was disqualified and Kumar was seen being taken away from the Field of Play with the help of the volunteers.
It was a comedy of errors in the case of the women's 4x100m race, which saw the baton being dropped during an exchange between first leg runner Tamanna and second runner Nithya Gandhe, though the Indians finished the race in 53.09 seconds.
Gandhe started running quite a distance, but after realising that the baton was not in her hand, she turned and ran back to pick it up.
The only silver-lining for the Indian contingent was the national record time in the mixed 4x100m relay race, though the quartet of Ragul Kumar, Nithya Gandhe, Animesh Kujur and Sneha SS finished sixth in heat number two with a time of 41.35 seconds, bettering the previous national mark of 42.30 seconds set in March in Chandigarh.
The mixed 4x400m relay quartet of Theerthesh P Shetty, Kumari Saloni, Nihal William and Rashdeep Kaur ended at fifth in heat number one with a time of 3 minutes and 19.40 seconds.
On Saturday, all the five Indian relay teams had failed to make it to the respective final rounds and thus missed out on the 2027 World Championships berths.
