PTI

Sivganga (TN), Apr 18: Union home minister P Chidambaram on Saturday described BJP leader LK Advani's 100-day plan to bring back illegal money stashed in foreign tax havens as a "smokescreen" and wondered whether he was "unwittingly" alerting those who have deposits outside.

In a hard hitting reaction to the BJP's Prime Ministerial candidate's statement issued in Mumbai on Friday, he said "I am afraid that Mr Advani's 100-day plan looks to me like a smokescreen.

"I wonder whether he is unwittingly alerting those who have deposits abroad to re-arrange their affairs in the next four weeks before a new government is sworn in.

He said, "I am afraid Mr Advani is doing more harm than good by repeatedly raising this issue, especially when he has been informed about the efforts being made by the government."

Chidambaram said that the government has made "significant" progress in acquiring information from the German Central Tax Office.

"I am not at liberty to disclose the progress made because there are still some procedural formalities required by the German Tax Office," he adding at appropriate time, he was sure the Indian government would be able to release the information that would be obtained from the German Tax Office.

Chidambaram said that Advani continued to "mystify" the issues relating to capital flying out of the country.

He said no one denied that over the years some people have illegally taken money out of the country and kept it in banks and other places which were protected by strong laws relating to bank secrecy.

The latest of Advani, he said, was the report of a so-called high level task force.

"I am afraid the report of the task force is no more than the rehashing of already known information to which they have added some ingenious arithmetic. I do not think any credibility can be attached to the numbers contained in the report."

The actual number, Chambray said, may be higher or may be lower. The real point was what has the government done and can the government do to unearth these illegal deposits abroad.

He said he would point out that in the six year period of the NDA government, they did absolutely nothing. "I wonder what Mr Advani was doing and his conscience was not aroused when his government did absolutely nothing.

As far as UPA government was concerned, Chidambaram, who was finance minister for over four years, said it had taken a number of initiatives.

Firstly, he said as explained in his letter to Advani on May 16 last year, government was already working with the German Central Tax Office to procure the information relating to deposits in LGT Bank in Liechtenstein.

Secondly, India is part of the consultative process in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) where India has supported the OCED formulation that no country should be permitted to decline to share information on grounds of bank secrecy.

Thirdly, it was during the UPA government that they had pushed India's membership in the financial action task force, "where we are close to being admitted as a full member".