White paper on black money in this Parliament session

New Delhi:  As part of his union budget, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee has committed to tabling a white paper on black money in this session of Parliament.  The document will share information on undeclared income held by Indians in foreign bank accounts to avoid taxes.
A white paper explains the government policy on a particular subject, and allows the government to collect feedback before a Bill is prepared.  

CBI Director A P Singh whipped up a storm last month when he said that 500 billion dollars or nearly 25 lakhs crores has been moved illegally by India to tax havens abroad.  "Largest depositors in Swiss Banks are also reported to be Indians," he had said.

However, the government has denied this. Minister of State for Finance SS Palanimanickam told the Rajya Sabha this week, "There is no authentic estimate of quantum of Indian money stashed in foreign banks".

The BJP and its leader LK Advani have attacked the government recently for shielding those whose foreign bank account details have been shared by other countries.  However, the Finance Minister has repeatedly stressed that going public with this information will violate treaties with those countries. In December, Mr Advani said in Parliament, "Reveal the names you have. It will be a humiliation if we do not get to know them from our Prime Minister or our Finance Minister and come to know from Julian Assange of WikiLeaks as he has said that he would reveal them in 2012."

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