Black money issue a 'good election fodder': Swiss Bankers Association

In the midst of LK Advani and other BJP leaders raising a hue and cry over black money stashed abroad, the Swiss Bankers Association has said the issue has become "good election fodder" and that the amounts being mentioned were "quite incredible".

"Black money and Swiss bank accounts have become good election fodder. My plea would be let us go by facts. Some of the figures that have been thrown around recently are quite incredible," the Association spokesman James Nason said.

"I just don't know the methodology on how they arrived at the figures. And we are talking about billions or trillions of dollars. Are there some statistics available that will give any scientific foundation for this?" Nason asked.

Advani, the BJP's prime ministerial candidate, on April 17 had released a report of the party's task force that pegged Indian wealth in Swiss banks and other offshore tax havens between USD 500 billion and USD 1.4 trillion (more than the size of the Indian economy).

The party had relied on inputs from the Global Financial Integrity (GFI) report of the Washington-based Center for International Policy, among others, to back its claim.

India, Nason said, could not just throw the telephone book at the Swiss authorities saying that someone has a bank account in Switzerland.

"Something must have happened. There must be a well-founded concrete evidence of wrong-doing and this again will come through the official channels," he added.