‘Finance ministry has no idea of amount of smuggled gold’
By IANSTuesday, August 10, 2010
NEW DELHI - A Right to Information (RTI) activist who wanted to know about the estimated sale/consumption of smuggled gold in India said Tuesday the finance ministry had told him that it had no information on the matter.
“The economic affairs department under the union finance ministry in a reply to an RTI application said that it has no knowledge about the estimated sale/consumption of smuggled gold in the country,” RTI activist Subhash Agrawal told IANS.
Agrawal also inquired whether the foreign banks abroad offered any assistance to the Indian government in revealing details of accounts/account holders from India with accounts in foreign banks.
“I asked the ministry if the government of Germany, or any other, offer assistance to government of India in revealing details of accounts/account-holders from India in banks of Germany and also if the indian government is aware of media-reports about heavy amounts of unaccounted money of many Indian citizens in Swiss banks,” said Agrawal.
The ministry transferred these queries regarding foreign banks to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), which also said that they do not have any information regarding the queries.
