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The first round of consultations between New Delhi and the Swiss Government on tracing the black money deposited in tax havens in that country will be held in December. However, there is no guarantee of prosecution of offenders on the basis of information secured from them. According to Finance Ministry sources, Indian officials will have their first round of discussions with officials of Swiss government to evolve a legal system that will enable India to trace black money. They said that such a system could be evolved through a Double Taxation Avoidance Treaty (DTAT) with Switzerland on the model of the agreements reached with countries of the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Although, the DTAT could lead to information being secured from Switzerland in specific cases (in which individuals would have violated laws in India), but it cannot guarantee that such persons could also be prosecuted for that offence, they pointed out. In April, Germany gave information in a case where an individual had violated tax laws and on the information given by the German government tax due from him was also collected. But Germany gave the information on the specific condition that no prosecution would be launched against the individual and the government had to comply with that condition Getting information from the Swiss banks was not an easy task, and Indian government will have to become eligible to ask for such information under a proper bilateral treaty. Recently, the US government successfully tracked some cases of American citizens stashing away their money there. The US could even prosecute them.

First round of Indo-Swiss talks on black money to be held in December