Have list of 700 Indians with unaccounted Swiss accounts: Kejriwal

In yet another expose activist-turned-politician Arvind Kejriwal today targeted the issue of black money and claimed he had a list of 700 Indians who held accounts in HSBC's branch in Geneva.

According to Kejriwal, the information for the 'expose' had been provided to IAC by a senior leader of the Congress party.

Blaming the government, the IAC press note said, "Developments of the last few years have given a ray of hope that if the Indian government acted tough like its US counterpart did a few years back, India also might get access to the list of those having their undeclared accounts abroad. However, Indian government seems to be more interested in helping the guilty rather than punishing them."

The IAC said, in July 2011 the government received a list of roughly 700 people having bank accounts in HSBC Geneva. "The list contains bank balances of these people in 2006. We could not access all the names," the note said.

According to the note the following names appeared in the list: Mukesh Dhirubhai Ambani (Rs100 crore), Anil Dhirubhai Ambani (Rs100 crore), Motech Software Private Ltd (Reliance Group company) had Rs2,100 crore, Reliance Industries Ltd (Rs 500 crore), Sandeep Tandon (Rs125 crore), Anu Tandon (Rs125 crore), Naresh Kumar Goyal (Rs80 crore), Burmans (3 family members) had Rs25 crore, Yashovardhan Birla - no balance.

IAC said that on receipt of the list in July 2011 the Income Tax department started conducting raids, with three raids conducted on 28th July 2011 in Delhi. IAC added, statements of those raided were recorded under oath, in which they admitted to the genuineness of the information.