A Swiss bank account is really no big deal, after all

There are some words and expressions that occur in our country’s newspapers with remarkable persistence over years. In time they acquire meanings far beyond the words themselves. ‘Swiss bank’ is one example. I’ve heard the words all my adult life. The banks became, in my imagination, like places out of James Bond movies, filled with billions of dollars and people in sharp suits.

So when I arrived in Zurich, my first desire was to see what a real Swiss bank looks like. I didn’t immediately reveal this to my local friend Christoph, but Zurich is a small place, and soon enough we found ourselves in Paradeplatz, the swish corner of Zurich that houses most of the big banks. I looked up at the buildings housing these institutions and peered hesitantly in through the doorways.

They seemed like regular banks. They were neater than banks in India, of course, but then everything in Switzerland is a few orders of magnitude neater than the corresponding item in India. For starters, the tap water is drinkable, like everywhere in western Europe. I wonder when will we get to that stage. It is a far more real and tangible indicator of a country’s development than numbers like growth rate and GDP that have meaning only for economists.

Anyway, I wanted to know more about the banks. Hesitantly, I broached the subject with Christoph. I was afraid it might be a sensitive topic. Christoph just laughed. Yes he had an account in a bank. He was Swiss and he had a bank account like everyone else. Indians have accounts in Indian banks don’t they?

This was a bit of a downer. I told him that the true measure of having arrived in life in India seems to be the Swiss bank account. You can have a swank house, a sleek car, and a sexy girlfriend or boyfriend, but without the Swiss bank account, you still haven’t quite made it. I have none of these, but I wanted to leapfrog stages and go directly to the Swiss bank account. Could I open an account with my Indian passport and 500 Swiss francs?

Christoph laughed some more at that. In Switzerland, they have rules about everything, and they follow those rules in scrupulous detail. Starting a bank account as a foreigner involves filling a series of daunting forms that would require full identification and a minimum deposit for me, as an Indian, of Rs10 lakh in the case of Credit Suisse, the largest private bank in Switzerland. In fact, I found I could have my Swiss bank account in India itself, since the bank has a branch at Worli, Mumbai. Of course I don’t have the money for starting the account. I’m a poor writer!

For those who do, though, opening the account should be no more or less trouble than opening an account with any other posh bank. And while the banks do have great concern for privacy, which is a big thing in Switzerland, they don’t seem to have any exceptional degree of secrecy. The usual client information — name, address, proof of residence, bank statement, etc — is available with the banks and can legally be accessed by government investigators if there is a ‘lifting order’ from a judge in the course of a criminal investigation.

So now, I’m more confused than ever about all those alleged billions of Indian rupees said to be sitting in Swiss banks. The ball, it would seem, is in the court of Indian investigators, which could be the police of any state. Every political party and activist makes such a fuss over the “black money in Swiss banks”. Does anyone do anything more?

Samrat is the author of The Urban Jungle