Black money issue a "good election fodder": Swiss Bankers Assn

New Delhi, Apr 26 (PTI) In the midst of the prime
ministerial candidate of India's main opposition BJP, L K
Advani and other 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 told
private television channel NDTV.

"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. PTI