UPA has adopted a policy of deafening silence and inaction' For your knowledge and further sharing.

March 29, 2009 | 16:08 IST


At a press conference in New Delhi on Sunday, Senior Bharatiya Janata
Party�leader and the National Democratic Alliance's prime ministerial
candidate L K Advani questioned the United Progressive
Alliance's�'deafening silence about Indian wealth', estimated at
between Rs. 25 lakh and Rs 70 lakh crore, hoarded in secret Swiss bank
accounts.

Advani claimed that the money was a mix of 'political bribes, crime
money and venal business'.

This is the full text of his speech:

Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh is going to attend the G-20 summit
in London on April 2. Ahead of this meeting, I wish to bring a highly
important matter to the attention of the people of India.

It is well known that Swiss banks provide secrecy and safety for tax
evaders, corrupt individuals and criminals of various nationalities to
hoard their monies. Several offshore tax havens are also used for
murky financial dealings. The extent of illicit money lodged in Swiss
banks is mind-boggling. Estimates vary.

According to Wikipedia, they totaled $ 2.6 trillions (Rs. 130 lakh
crores in today's exchange rate) in 2001. In 2007, they were believed
to be about $5.7 trillions (Rs. 285 lakh crore), a staggering 80%
increase in six years.

It is equally well known that many wealthy Indians have deposited
their illicit monies in secret Swiss bank accounts and tax havens
elsewhere around the world. As per credible estimates, these amounts
range between $500 billion (Rs. 25,00,000 crore) and $1400 billion
(Rs. 70,00,000 crore).

So long as the West-dominated world economy was doing well for the
western countries, their governments winked at the secretive
functioning of Swiss banks and tax havens. However, the current global
economic crisis, which put several of their important financial
institutions on the verge of collapse, has forced them to take many
unconventional steps to revive their ailing economies.

The leaders of France, Germany, UK and other countries have joined
forces with the US President Barack Obama in the battle against tax
havens. They are mounting pressure on Switzerland and offshore tax
havens to put an end to banking secrecy to bring back their
tax-evading citizens' hidden wealth.

This is likely to be an important point on the agenda of the G-20
Summit in London. In February, UBS, the largest Swiss bank, was forced
by the US tax authorities to reveal the names of some 300 presumed tax
evaders. The US threatened to sue the UBS. Fearing that this could
lead to the demise of the bank, the Swiss authorities invoked an
emergency clause in their banking law and gave the data to the US.
Soon thereafter the Obama administration announced a law to uncover
illicit American money in all secretive tax havens, including the
Switzerland.�
�
UPA government's evasive reply to my earlier demand

It is baffling that, in the face of this growing governmental activism
in the West, the UPA Government has adopted a policy of deafening
silence and inaction. It has taken no steps whatsoever to get
information about illicit money kept abroad by Indian nationals and to
strive to get it back.

Last year, I had written a letter to Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh
about the need to get the names of Indians, presumed to have secret
accounts in LGT Bank in Liechtenstein in Germany. I was disappointed
to see that the reply I received from the then Union Finance Minister
was evasive. (Copies of both letters attached.)

Commenting on India's ambivalence, Transparency International (TI)
said that India has maintained "a stoic silence over the issue and has
not approached the German government for this data'' (The Economic
Times, 25.5.2008). Some ministers in the UPA Government are reported
to have made several trips to Switzerland as the personal leg of their
official tours abroad.

Considering the size of the Indian wealth hoarded abroad, the
government is duty-bound to take proactive steps to bring it back. The
amount involved constitutes 3-10 times India's overseas debt, and
50-120% of India's GDP. Even if we take the lower limit of the
estimated amount of Rs. 25 lakh crore, the money is sufficient to:

� Relieve the debts of all farmers and landless
� Build world-class roads all over the country � from national and
state highways to district and rural roads;
� Completely eliminate the acute power shortage in the country and
also to bring electricity to every unlit rural home;
� Provide safe and adequate drinking water in all villages and towns in India
� Construct good-quality houses, each worth Rs. 2.5 lakh, for 10 crore families;
� Provide Rs. 4 crore to each of the nearly 6 lakh villages; the money
can be used to build, in every single village, a school with
internet-enabled education, a primary health centre with telemedicine
facility, a veterinary clinic, a playground with gymnasium, and much
more.

What a transformation it can make to the ordinary and poor Indian lives!

Financial RDX with terror links

The need to put an end to hoarding of Indian wealth abroad, and to
bring back the wealth already hoarded, is all the greater since the
illicit money seems to be a mix of political bribes, crime money and
venal business. The money trail in the Bofors scam in the 1980s had
revealed the involvement of secret Swiss bank accounts. Last year,
when the stock market was booming, National Security Advisor Shri M.K.
Narayanan publicly stated that terror money might be operating through
fund flows. What he had in mind was the Participatory Note [PN]
mechanism for investment of undisclosed funds from abroad in Indian
stock markets. The PN mechanism was introduced when India was
desperately in need of forex inflow. The UPA government has permitted
this mode of investment even after it had grown to alarming
proportions. More recently, a hawala operator from Pune was found by
the Income Tax department to have unaccounted wealth valued at Rs
35,000 crore. He is also suspected to have secret bank accounts
abroad.

The BJP sees in secret banking the RDX that has the potential not only
to blow up national financial systems but also to support and fund
global terror networks whose attacks on India increased during the UPA
regime. We do not expect any action from the UPA Government, which has
shown total disinclination to act in this matter. In any case, its
days are numbered.

If the people of India elect a BJP-led NDA Government in May 2009, we
assure the nation that India will join the global effort to put an end
to banking secrecy and intensify it by every means � diplomatic,
political and economic � to get back the real Sovereign Wealth of our
country. The BJP will intensely and actively educate the public
opinion on this issue and take it to the masses and create intense
public pressure on the system to uncover this nexus between secret
foreign money, terror, and politics.

BJP's promise and plan of action

1. The Bharatiya Janata Party will conduct mass public opinion polls
on April 6, 2009, Foundation Day of the BJP, on Indian money in secret
accounts abroad.

2. The Chief Ministers of the BJP-ruled States will write to the Prime
Minister urging him to write to the Swiss and other authorities to
disclose the names of hoarders of Indian monies abroad, since it is a
huge loss to the state exchequer.

3. The BJP will form a Task Force comprising experts in law,
accounting, management and intelligence to prepare a strategic
document for India to recommend ways to get back the national wealth
stashed away illegally by the corrupt politicians, venal businessmen
and criminal overlords. Shri S. Gurumurthy, well-known chartered
accountant and writer specializing in investigative journalism; Dr. R.
Vaidyanathan, Professor of Finance at the Indian Institute of
Management, Bangalore; Shri Mahesh Jethmalani, a renowned lawyer; and
Shri Ajit Doval, an acclaimed national security expert, have agreed to
work voluntarily on this Task Force.

Courtesy: http://www.lkadvani.in/






UPA evasive about illicit money: Advani

March 29, 2009 | 15:49 IST


Senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader and the National Democratic
Alliance's prime ministerial candidate L K Advani on Sunday launched
an attack on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh again, claiming that the PM
hadn't done enough�to address�the issue of�illicit money hoarded in
Swiss Bank accounts.

At a press conference in New Delhi, Advani questioned the United
Progressive Alliance's 'deafening silence about Indian wealth',
estimated at between Rs 25 lakh and Rs 70 lakh crore, hoarded in
secret Swiss bank accounts.

He�asked the PM, who is scehduled to meet United States President
Barack Obama during the G-20 summit in London, to demand the
disclosure of details of accounts of Indians in Swiss and other
foreign banks.

Advani claimed that the money was a mix of 'political bribes, crime
money and venal business'.

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