The Tax Mole Hunt

Three definite conclusions can be drawn from this statement—one, hundreds of Indians have parked money in Liechtenstein; two, their names are known to Germany; three, the UPA government has stonewalled Germany's offer to communicate the names of Indians to New Delhi. The newspaper further said the Indian chapter of Transparency International (TI), an independent body campaigning to reduce corruption worldwide, has "urged the government to take all necessary steps to seek the data".

The truth, though, is fuzzy. Like all infamous scandals that get exposed, this one too started with a dawn raid. At 5 am, February 14, Klaus Zumwinkel, then CEO of Deutsche Post, the largely state-owned German mail company, was woken up by the police and confronted with information that he, along with many Germans, had transferred money into secret accounts held in Liechtenstein. Zumwinkel pleaded guilty to tax evasion. The details of his and reportedly another 1,399 secret accounts was culled from a CD that an employee of the Liechtenstein-based ltg Bank had sold to the German secret service.