Indian documents on Swiss bank racket ‘forged’

LONDON: Swizterland has claimed that the documents furnished by Indian authorities in the probe into six billion dollars allegedly stashed by Pune stud farm owner Hasan Ali Khan in Swiss bank accounts in a massive money laundering racket were "forged" raising questions over India's request for legal assistance in the case.

Khan is under I-T investigation after Swiss bank account details were allegedly recovered from a laptop in his house. The probe was widened after the ED stepped in and other foreign accounts were also being investigated, officials said.

"We have received in January 2007 request for legal assistance in case of Hasan Ali Khan and with this request we have received banking information but domestic inquiry has revealed that banking information are forged documents. So there are no indications that transfer of six billion dollars happened to Switzerland," Swiss Federal Justice spokesperson Falco Galli told Indian TV channels.

The money was mostly stashed in Union Bank of Switzerland and United Bank of Switzerland through money-laundering, according to Indian officials.

Galli also claimed that nothing has been heard from Indian authorities over the Hasan Khan issue since the last two years. The alleged money laundering racket involving Khan revolved around an intricate multinational trail of money transfer across Switzerland, New York, the British Virgin Islands and Pune.

Galli said the Indian Embassy in Switzerland was informed within one month after receiving a request for legal assistance that it did not meet the "required specification." "Without this specification and information we cannot go on with the procedures for legal assistance," he said.

"We had also asked the Indian authorities to show the relation between presumed offences and the accounts that are presumed to be in Switzerland," he added. Khan's wealth is said to be in the region of anything between USD 8-9 billion and most of it is allegedly unaccounted.

The Swiss stand comes at a time when the UPA government faced calls from BJP to act on recovering illegal wealth stashed overseas.