'Govt checking if any blackmoney is back'

 Revenue secretary Hasmukh Adhia said that the government is checking whether the outflow of deposits from Swiss banks have come back to the country.

“The fall in money by Indians in Swiss banks is a positive and it indicates that the government's steps to recover blackmoney are in the right direction,” Adhia said.

“If money has returned or routed back into India, we (government and agencies) are taking steps to track it,” Adhia added.

According to reports, Indian money in Swiss banks dipped by 33% at the end of 2015. Funds held by Indians with banks in Switzerland fell by CHF 596.42 million to to a 20-year low of CHF 1,217.6 million at the end of 2015, as per the latest data released by the Swiss National Bank.

Adhia, who had recently met Switzerland's officials to discuss faster bilateral implementation of Agreement for Automatic Exchange of Information (AEOI), is hopeful that Swiss officials will share details of deposits by Indians in the country.

 “Some days ago, I had a dialogue with my counterpart from Switzerland and they have agreed to automatically share information from 2018. This means we would receive every detail of the money deposited by our citizens in the Swiss banks,” Adhia said.

Clarifying some doubts about the recently announced income declaration scheme, Adhia said, “Confidentiality is an existing concern in new income declaration scheme. Income declaration scheme is a window for people to come clean, this scheme will not deal with source of income.”