Foreign Bank Account-holders' list

It is vastly amusing that the electronic media seem to be in a tizzy over a few names. Can we believe that the “guilty” number less than 1,000? Do 627 bank accounts hold the $1-trillion that we are often told is the quantum of India’s black money? For a country where it is widely believed that virtually every rich or powerful person is a crook, as being crooked is sewn into the national ethos, should not the list run into a thousand pages or more? Should it not contain the names of some of the most revered and fawned upon across the political, business, bureaucratic, showbiz, sports, and arts communities? Those who are said to be account-holders must be amused. Let us remember that not one person in all the names and numbers in the Jain diaries case of the 1990s was convicted.

The black money chase under way, prodded along by the process of judicial monitoring, seems destined to be an exercise in futility in terms of getting the money back. The accounts would have been closed and the money trail gone cold. Unless we have instant access to information on Indian account- holders abroad and transactions therein, complete cooperation from all foreign banks and the power to get these accounts frozen on request, the outcome of attempts may be limited to the revelation of names, causing embarrassment to the account-holders, providing ammunition to the sensation-hungry media and satisfying national curiosity. These accounts represent only a fraction of the ill-gotten wealth. There are more complex avenues such as front companies in tax havens. For instance, the spoils of the 2G scam cannot be in Swiss bank accounts in the names of people we suspect!

I always wonder what the position of this country would be were it not for timely interventions by the Supreme Court. We have a right to know who the people responsible for our plight are.

As someone who does not have a grounding in economics or the intricacies of the law of the land, I am unable to appreciate the sentiment which indicts those holding accounts in certain banks abroad. Of course, the government should worry about its agreements with foreign states and the right to privacy of all individuals, including those holding foreign accounts. It will be fair to term those accounts as holding “black money” only after a legal investigation and not before or even during the exercise. Much of the criticism in this case reeks of a feeling of moral superiority and appears intended to drive attention away from the issue of an exploitative and inegalitarian economic order within the nation itself.