This time, the internal affairs of India would appear to have meddled with its international commitments. Amid confusion over the extent to which the names of the 627 Indian nationals with accounts with HSBC in Geneva can be shared by the government, India has deferred signing the multilateral Competent Authority Agreement (CAA) at the OECD’s global tax forum. This is the template for the automatic sharing of overseas account details among signatory nations, which the NDA government had pledged to support at the G20 summit in Brisbane. Unlike the 65 nations which signed up this week, however, India cannot guarantee the confidentiality of shared data. This is because the Supreme Court required the NDA government to reveal the names behind all the HSBC accounts, even as the government wanted to limit disclosure to prosecutable account holders.
When election rhetoric is smoothly rendered into government policy and absolutely nothing is lost in translation, such embarrassments must result. The black money issue had served the BJP well as a poll plank, demonising persons unknown. It also suggested that public naming and shaming would follow if the NDA came to power. But while Baba Ramdev could stir hearts and minds with the idea, a government must be more circumspect in its pursuit of black money, for fear of stirring up trouble instead. The present government has tried to avoid full disclosure on the plea that confidentiality clauses of the international treaties under which India is seeking information could be broken. While the UPA had gone along with full disclosure, the NDA has tried to introduce a privacy argument, suggesting that it would be unfair to disclose names against whom no case can be made of tax avoidance. Through it all, its reluctance to take the Supreme Court into confidence is mystifying, since the list of account holders has been available with the Special Investigation Team set up by the very same court.
Recently, the government had resolved to bring all agencies and offices involved in the pursuit of black money under a unified command to streamline the process of soliciting information from other governments. Ten days later, all is confusion. While pleading for fairness by invoking privacy concerns, the government has released the titles of three accounts publicly and provided the rest under sealed cover, which is wholly unfair. And, having failed to sign the CAA in Berlin, it is far away from delivering on the BJP’s election promise.
