India Hopes To Rope In G-20 To Unearth Black Money

India will try to rope in G-20 in its effort to unearth black money stashed away in Switzerland and some other tax havens by insisting on retrospective sharing of information. This would be based on the new global information sharing format devised by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

Finance ministers of G-20 nations will meet later this week in Australia to endorse the information-sharing proposal. India's efforts to seek information from Switzerland on the black money, which has strict secrecy laws, have not yielded any result so far.

Switzerland has said that the information-sharing agreement it has with India came into effect in 2011 and it will not disclose any information about accounts opened prior to that. Minister of State for Finance, Nirmala Sitharaman, will represent India at the G-20 meet.

Black money stashed in Swiss banks has long been a political issue and the new Modi-led government is trying to bring back the money. It has also set up a special investigation team to look into the matter.