Invisible Money   (03 Apr 2009)

Former Finance Minister P Chidambaram came out with a statement last week on how the UPA government had conducted a diligent enquiry into the crores of Indian funds parked in Swiss bank accounts and has been diligently trying to get this money back into the country. Despite Chidambaram’s clarification, the BJP is fully keen to turn this into a major election issue. I find it amusing that the BJP is raking this controversy having taken a cue from an article published on a website, when the party had every opportunity to investigate and recover these funds during its five-year term in the centre. Far from taking a single step towards uncovering the sources of these funds during the NDA regime, the BJP did not even speak about it throughout its term. Some explanation is clearly needed from the party on why it suddenly remembered the Swiss money right ahead of the general elections and why it had slept on it all this while.

There is a joke gaining currency in the political circles that those who cannot keep a check on their own money are now offering to account for the alleged thousands of crores stashed in foreign banks. It was only three months ago that crores of rupees were stolen from BJP’s headquarters in New Delhi. The matter was painstakingly hushed up by the party itself as the money involved was unaccounted for; its sources unknown. Nobody knows exactly how much of BJP’s own money was stolen and whether it also made its way into the Swiss banks.