Herve Falciani who leaked the names of thousands of illicit bank account holders at HSBC in Geneva
The government is enlisting the assistance of Herve Falciani, who told NDTV just days ago that he has lots of information that could help India with its investigation to recover untaxed or black money stashed in Swiss and other foreign banks.
In 2008, Mr Falciani famously leaked the names of thousands of illicit bank account holders at HSBC in Geneva, where he was employed as a systems engineer. Countries like the US, Spain and Belgium are using him to identify tax defaulters, the banks that enable them, and the trail of undeclared money across continents.
NDTV has facilitated contact between Mr Falciani and Indian officials; the whistle-blower has told NDTV he is willing to travel with a team to India, if needed. (
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Mr Falciani spoke exclusively to NDTV in France earlier this month and said "India has less than 1 per cent of the information from the original data." (
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In 2011, France shared the list of Indians who allegedly hold bank accounts at HSBC in Geneva with the government. That is "just the tip of the iceberg", Mr Falciani told NDTV. He said India was given only 2 MB of the 200 GB of data. (
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The government has a list of 627 account holders at HSBC -their names were submitted recently to the Supreme Court, which is monitoring the government's attempts to recover black money. About 400 of the names on the list have been identified so far, said Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, and of them, 250 have admitted to holding foreign black money accounts.
The Supreme Court has set up a team of former judges and retired bureaucrats to blueprint the recovery of black money.
On Monday, this Special Investigations Team or SIT will reportedly tell the top court that the tax assessment for 100 HSBC Geneva account holders has been completed, and that they collectively owe 1,000 crores. The team hopes to calculate the amount due as penalty by other account holders by the end of March.