Would you feel changing tag India as a poor nation or a corrupt nation?

The amount of black money deposits in the Swiss bank by India is highest compare to the other countries. The second best Russia has 4 times lesser deposit. U.S. is not even there in the counting among top five. India has more money in Swiss banks than all the other countries combined.

Would you like to take it as pride? Can you call yourself as rich nation with poor people?

Hold on!

Reportedly due to international pressure, the Swiss government agreed to disclose the names of the account holders only if the respective governments formally asked for it. Indian government is not asking for the details. Why?

Your radar might be up and you very well know why.

The bank deposits of $1,500 billion in foreign reserve which have been misappropriated, it is an amount 13 times larger than the country's foreign debt. Dishonest industrialist, scandalous politicians and corrupt government officials have deposited in Swiss banks in their illegal personal accounts. If this amount can be distributed among 45 crore poor people and they can get Rs 1,00,000 each.

To an estimate, some 80,000 people travel to Switzerland every year, out of which 25,000 travel very frequently. 'Obviously, these people won't be tourists. They must be travelling there for some other reason,' believes an official involved in tracking illegal money referring on the ground of anonymity. And, clearly, he isn't referring to the commerce ministry bureaucrats who've been flitting in and out of Geneva ever since the World Trade Organisation (WTO) negotiations went into a tailspin!

I bet you know all this!

Right! Swiss Banking Association report, 2006 details bank deposits in the territory of Switzerland by nationals of following countries: India-$1,456 Billion, Russia-$470 Billion, U.K.-$390 Billion, Ukraine- $100 Billion, and China -$96 Billion. India with $1,456 billion or $1.4 trillion has more money in Swiss banks than rest of the world combined. Public loot since 1947!

Here is paper with Salt!

Dev Kar is presently researching the issue of capital flight from developing countries. According to his model estimates, India ranks as one of the top ten countries in the world in terms of the sheer volume of illicit financial outflows. And he says he is not surprised by the Swiss bank deposit figures.

The deposit and operation of foreign bank accounts, in fact, some finance experts and economists believe as tax havens to be a conspiracy of the western world against the poor countries. By allowing the proliferation of tax havens in the twentieth century, the western world explicitly encourages the movement of scarce capital from the developing countries to the rich.

In March 2005, the Tax Justice Network (TJN) published a research finding demonstrating that $11.5 trillion of personal wealth was held offshore by rich individuals across the globe.

The findings estimated that a large proportion of this wealth was managed from some 70 tax havens. Further, augmenting these studies of TJN, Raymond Baker -- in his widely celebrated book titled 'Capitalism's Achilles Heel: Dirty Money and How to Renew the Free Market System' -- estimates that at least $5 trillion have been shifted out of poorer countries to the West since the mid-1970.

It is further estimated by experts that one per cent of the world's population holds more than 57 per cent of total global wealth, routing it invariably through these tax havens. How much of this is from India is anybody's guess.

Indians who parked in these tax havens is illegitimate money acquired through corrupt means. Naturally, the secrecy associated with the bank accounts in such places is central to the issue, not their low tax rates as the term 'tax havens' suggests. If you remember the beneficiary of Bofors could not be traced because of the secrecy associated with these bank accounts.

What if we bring back all the deposits? Most of our problems facing today can be solved. But you know as I know it is a Herculean task and a Utopian dream.