Make justified demands, say Swiss banks to India

New Delhi/Zurich: With India putting pressure on Swiss authorities to bring back the black money, banks in Switzerland say they follow strict rules and the requests from Indian authorities must be “properly justified”.

To bring back illicit money stashed away overseas, India has recently made a fresh request to Switzerland to seek bank details of such entities.

The Association of Foreign Banks in Switzerland is of the view that a clear and transparent policy can help in dispelling “apprehensions” and the “conjectures” should not be allowed to dominate the public opinion.

“India should be aware that its reputation in Switzerland as a country with a proper legal system and functioning rule of law has been seriously hampered as of late — for reasons not related to financial matters. But the mistrust spills over in other matters,” the association’s general secretary Martin Maurer said.

Indian money in Swiss banks rose 43 per cent last year to close to 2.03 billion Swiss francs (Rs 14,000 crore), as per the latest data from Switzerland’s central banking authority Swiss National Bank.

Incidentally, two ‘big banks’ in Switzerland — UBS and Credit Suisse — account for nearly two-third of such funds.

“UBS applies the highest standards in the world to fight against money laundering and corruption,” a UBS spokesperson said, a spokesperson for Credit Suisse also said, “We conduct our banking business in strict compliance with the applicable laws, rules and regulations in the markets where we operate.”