Black money investigation: Yash Birla doesn't have individual Swiss bank account in his name, says group

Mumbai: With Yash Birla’s name being made public by the Swiss government in relation to an information request from the Indian tax authorities, his business group on Tuesday said he has “no individual bank account in his name or under his control”. [caption id=“attachment_2264540” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Yash Birla’s group said the industrialist doesn’t have any Swiss bank account. AFP[/caption] The group also said this position has already been communicated to the tax authorities in Mumbai. “Mr Yash Birla has no individual bank account in his name or under his control. This has been explicitly confirmed earlier by the Swiss bank in writing and the same has already been communicated to the Indian tax authorities,” an official spokesperson of Yash Birla Group said in an emailed statement. This was in response to queries sent to the group with regard to Birla’s name being published in the Swiss government’s official gazette about information provided to the Indian tax department on a request made in this regard. Birla is one of the seven ‘Indian nationals’ whose names have been made public through such gazette notifications. Yashovardhan Birla, who is commonly known as Yash Birla, is the chairman of the group whose group firms are into steel products, electrical appliances, health, lifestyle and education, among others. Two separate notifications, dated 11 November and 16 December, 2014, have been published in the gazette about Birla. The first one concerns a request received by the Swiss Federal Tax Authority and the second is about the said information having been provided to the foreign tax and tax research division of the department of revenue in India’s finance ministry. Besides his name, the notifications also mention Yashovardhan Birla’s date of birth and a Mumbai address. However, the gazette notification has withheld the details that have been shared by the Swiss authorities with their Indian counterpart. It also said that the information given to India should be “kept confidential” and should be made available only to people or authorities, including courts and administrative bodies concerned with the assessment or collection of taxes or with the prosecution and for such purposes only, as per the Swiss-Indian double taxation agreement. It further said that the Swiss FTA might have blackened the information “which are not eligible for treaty assistance”, in its response to the Indian tax authorities. PTI