Black money in swiss banks

For over a week, newspapers have been publishing reports that the Swissauthorities rejected the request to disclose details of the accounts andtransactions of Hassan Ali Khan because the Government of India had sentforged papers.This has now been confirmed by the spokesman of the Ministry of Justice ofthe Swiss Government in his interview to CNN-IBN.
The Justice Ministry official has also revealed that this fact about theforgery had been communicated to the Indian Government in early 2007itself.He has said that the Indian Government was requested to provide validdocuments and to confirm that the case against Hassan Ali Khan is acriminalone.The Indian Government sent some documents in March 2007, and even thesewerenot the requisite ones.Since then, the Indian Government has not got back to the Swiss Governmentat all on the matter neither to show that the documents it had suppliedwere genuine and adequate nor to replace them with genuine documents andones that are required under the law.
What can this indicate except that what was done was done by design?Furthermore, it is shocking that the Government has suppressed thesefacts what it had ostensibly done, and what the Swiss Government hadcommunicatedto it from the Supreme Court in its affidavit-in-reply to the PIL thathasbeen filed by concerned citizens. As is well known, suppression of factsfrom the court and that too from the highest court of the country is agrave offence on its own. The Government knows this as well, and yet haschosen to suppress them rather than let the Court, and, through it, thepeople get an opportunity to learn the truth.That this Government, the Government that has let Ottavio Quattrochi takeaway the money that had been frozen on orders of the courts; thisGovernmentwhich then used the CBI to let the man off the hook completely; thisGovernment in which corruption has reached levels that were unheard oftillnow; this Government which has been consistently soft on terror, that thisGovernment should now have stooped so low as to help an operator likeHassanAli Khan by sending forged documents to a foreign Government is entirelyincharacter.Based on what they have been told by officials of intelligence agencies aswell as of the Enforcement Directorate, the media have reported thatHassanAli KhanHas been known to be connected to Dawood IbrahimHas been known to have been channeling very large amounts from unknownsources into the Indian stock marketHas had 8 to 9 billion dollars in the UBS and other banks ofSwitzerlandHas been responsible for hawala transactions of over Rs. 35,000 crorethrough Swiss banks.That such a nefarious operator should be helped by this Government isentirely predictable it is the Congress(I) Government of Karnataka whichrefused to permit the CBI to investigate the equally notorious Telgi, andlater put obstacle after obstacle in its course.Apart from the sorts of statements by which it tried to mislead thecountrywhen Mr. Advani raised the demand for getting Indias stolen wealth back,the way it has helped Hassan Ali Khan exposes its character, and the factthat as long as such a Government is in office, the country will never getits wealth back.But what is at stake is not just the wealth that has been stolen from thecountry. In addition,the countrys honour is at stakeand its security.Once again, the country is being held up to ridicule once again, theworldis being shown how the Government of India will bend our laws andinstitutions to help the worst sorts of criminals and their associates,exactly as banana republics do.Moreover, international bodies as well the National Security Advisor ofthisvery Government have pointed out that black money, hawala operations aswellas tax havens are being used by terrorists and agencies like the ISI forcarrying out terrorist and anti-India operations.The Asia Pacific Group, which has been studying money laundering andterrorist operations, pointed out in 2005 that India had not taken therequisite steps in this regard, that it had not even carried out thecomprehensive threat assessment that was required.The Government did nothing.No less an authority than the National Security Advisor has been stressingpublicly since early 2007 that stricter provisions need to be put in placeto check money flows to and from tax havens, and to ensure that bankingsecrecy is brought to an end, as these channels are being used byterroristsand their sponsors.
The Government did nothing actually, it did something: around exactlythetime that the National Security Advisor was urging the foregoing, inFebruary-March 2007, it sent forged documents to foreclose any possibilityof facts being discovered about Hassan Ali Khan and his associates.In June 2008, the Government-appointed Administrative Reforms Commission,headed by its very own, M. Veerappa Moily, drew attention to the urgentneedto plug terrorist financing. In its 8th Report, the Commission listed thechannels through which, and the guises under which terrorist organizationsand their sponsors were sending money for their operations in India. Inparticular, it urged that the anti-money laundering and counter-terroristoperations needed to be merged. It made a series of detailedrecommendationsin this regard.The Government did nothing.That on even so grave a matter the state of affairs is exactly as it wasisevident from the fact that in March 2009, the International NarcoticsControl Strategy Report released by the US State Department again showsthat, far from taking effective steps, India has not even brought itslegalframework against money laundering and terrorism financing at par with theregime agreed to by the inter-governmental Financial Action Task Force. Iturges the country to swiftly do so.We urge the media to continue to pursue the facts.We urge the people to see how the countrys development, its security, itshonour are being jeopardized by this Government.And how even the obvious steps will just not be taken till this Governmentremains in office.