No claimants for India-linked dormant Swiss bank accounts!

Zurich/New Delhi: It is the third year since Swiss banks made public a list of accounts lying dormant without any trace of owners and no claimant has come forward for those with Indian links, even as a political slugfest continues in India over alleged black money parked there.

The Switzerland Banking Ombudsman first published the list of all such accounts - of Swiss citizens and foreigners including from India - in December 2015, and it keeps getting updated as and when an account is declared dormant.

The details get deleted from the list when a successful claim is made and this was the case for as many as 40 accounts and two safe deposit boxes in the year 2017 itself, as per the latest information shared by the Ombudsman.

However, the list of over 3,500 such accounts continues to have at least six with links to India since December 2015, as no successful claimant has come forward for them.

Switzerland was perceived to be among the safest havens

globally for financial assets for many years before a global crackdown on alleged tax evasion by using such strong banking privacy practices as prevalent in Swiss banks led to Switzerland agreeing to tighten its rules.