Union Minister Arun Jaitley today asserted that not even a single rupee of loans taken by the corporates has been written

Country's third largest private sector lender Axis Bank today entered into an agreement to acquire payments wallet Freecha

Deposits in Jan Dhan accounts have touched a new high of Rs 64,564 crore, of which over Rs 300 crore came in the first sev

The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) has asked private as well as public sector banks to set up Aadhaar en

Deterrent punishment has to be given in cheque bounce cases to ensure the credibility of a negotiable instrument like cheq

Amidst the concerted efforts by the government and RBI to rein in the mounting bad loans issue, Sebi Chairman Ajay Tyagi t

Led by western and southern states of India, bank credit has seen a manifold jump in the past 25 years as total outstandin

The government has given a last chance to district cooperative banks, commercial banks and post offices to deposit the ban

Bankers are meeting from Monday to finalise their next course of action on six of the 12 bad loan accounts for immediate r

The ED today filed its first charge sheet against liquor baron Vijay Mallya and others in connection with its money launde

March 16: CPM Manifesto says (if it came to power): it would “launch a drive to unearth black money, especially those (sic) stashed in Swiss banks and other tax havens”

March 27: Sharad Yadav of Janata Dal (United) says there is 1.47 trillion dollars hidden by Indians in Swiss banks -- enough to repay the entire foreign debt of India
and leave enough to abolish all taxes for many years. 

March 29: LK Advani quotes the Wikipedia to say "they [illicit money in Swiss banks] totaled $ 2.6 trillions (Rs. 130 lakh crores in today’s exchange rate) in 2001. In 2007, they were believed to be about $5.7 trillions (Rs. 285 lakh crore), a staggering 80% increase in six years." and: "It is equally well known that many wealthy Indians have deposited their illicit monies in secret Swiss bank accounts and tax havens elsewhere around the world. As per credible estimates, these amounts range between $500 billion (Rs. 25,00,000 crore) and $1400 billion (Rs. 70,00,000 crore).

April 2 & 3, the redoubtable S. Gurumurthy stepped in to corroborate Mr Advani's figures: It is undisputed that the Nehruvian socialist model forced huge sums out of India. So the amount of Indian black wealth secreted away in the last 60 years — estimated at from $500 billion (Rs 25 lakh crore) to $1400 billion (Rs 70 lakh crore) — does not seem to be wide off the mark. Economists callit flight of capital. This is the people’s money stolen from them. [See here and here]

But by then a reality check was in place. Bibek Debroy was the first off the mark, in the Indian Express who traced the genesis of all these figures to an email circulating for the last two years or so. After examining various claimed sources, his conclusion:

What we are thus left with is a maze of figures, some concocted, others real, but sometimes quoted out of context. That doesn’t mean the issue is unimportant... These are issues we should talk about, not so much the pull of tax havens. But first, let us get the figures right.  [Read more here]

And now, Ashok Desai, writing in the Telegraph concludes that these "are someone’s guesses, driven by powerful wishful thinking" and:

So even if Advani becomes an iron Prime Minister, he will not bring a single illicit penny home. He was only diverting attention from the Varun affair.

Read the full piece here: Avaricious Dreams

In 2006, Indian nationals reportedly held the largest quantity of illegally stashed money in Swiss banks. The amount was as high as $1,456 billion. The more prominent stragglers were crooks from Russia ($470 billion), the United Kingdom ($390 billion), Ukraine ($100 billion) and China (US $96 billion). Money stored away by Indians in numbered bank accounts in Switzerland actually exceeded the total deposits by nationals from all other countries of the world taken together.