Enforcement Directorate directed to give details of Swiss bank a/c

Published: Sunday, Oct 10, 2010, 0:18 IST

By Mayank Aggarwal

Place: New Delhi

Agency: DNA

Observing that Indian citizens are keen to know about the amount of black money stashed away in foreign banks, a full bench of the Central Information Commission (CIC) has directed the Enforcement Directorate (ED) to reveal “an estimate of the total volume of such money involved in the investigations they are presently conducting.”

The decision came on an application filed by a VR Chandran who had asked if the “union finance ministry is aware of the existence of such secret accounts of Indian citizens in Swiss banks amounting to 1456 billion US dollars.” He had also asked for action to be taken in order to find the identity of the account holders, list of depositors, action contemplated if deposits are illegal and if the Indian government had asked the Swiss authorities for repatriating the illegal money.

But when ED — the government’s principal agency to check and undo illegal stashing away of money from the country — refused to provide any information claiming exemption under the RTI Act, Chandran went to CIC.

The full bench of the chief information commissioner Wajahat Habibullah and information commissioners AN Tiwari, ML Sharma and Shailesh Gandhi held that issues raised in the RTI application are serious and have understandably raised public concern.

During the hearing at CIC, ED stated that they cannot either confirm or deny media reports about the likely volume of black money stashed away in foreign banks illegally by Indian nationals.

The CIC said: “While the ED may take the position that they have no way of assessing the total volume of illegally held money by Indians in foreign banks, they can surely provide an estimate of the total volume of such money involved in the investigations they are presently conducting

ED had claimed exemptions from disclosure obligation under RTI Act as they are included in the second schedule, under Sec 24 of the RTI Act. The CIC said they would like to dwell upon that in light of an inbuilt provision under Sec 24 itself which states that these exemptions are subject to their not being matters of “human rights violations” or “allegations of corruption”.