BRP Bhaskar: Black money is piling up
Exclusive to The Gulf Today There was a spurt in money stashed by Indians in secret accounts in Switzerland last year. The last time a big jump occurred was in 2006. The gap of five years is significant. According to Swiss bank data, Indian deposits increased by one million Swiss francs in 2006 to touch a peak of 6.5 billion francs (about Rs400 billion). Thereafter the deposits started falling and were as low as about Rs93 billion at the end of 2010. Last year fresh inflow of funds raised the total to Rs127 billion. It is not unreasonable to draw a link between the swelling of Swiss bank deposits and national and state elections in India, normally held at intervals of five years. The fall in deposits since 2006 can then be explained in terms of repatriation of funds to meet the expenses of the elections of the last five years, including the parliamentary poll of 2009. And the recent spurt can be seen as part of the preparations for the upcoming elections, including the Lok Sabha poll due in 2014. The Association for Democratic Rights, a non-governmental organisation monitoring election malpractices, estimated that campaign expenses during a five-year period could be anywhere between Rs350 billion and Rs810 billion. It reckoned that one-fourth of the estimated Rs100 billion spent during the 2009 Lok Sabha poll was black money.