Finance minister Piyush Goyal (PTI photo)

NEW DELHI: Congress accused finance minister Piyush Goyal of obfuscation for claiming that black money in Swiss bank had registered a decrease, saying that he had selectively quoted the statistics to mislead the country.

AICC spokesmen Rajeev Gowda and Gourav Vallabh told reporters that Goyal quoted figures from Bank of International Settlement (BIS) which does not take into account "non-deposit liability" like bonds and mutual funds bought with black money.

They said the report by Swiss National Bank which revealed a 50% increase in black money from India was more credible.

Still, Gowda and Vallabh said, the finance minister had cited the fourth quarter figures of 2017 of BIS which showed a dip in black money while ignoring the first quarter of 2018 which had shown an increase.

"Why go from SNB to BIS and mislead the people. Why does the government not simply accept that it had not brought even eight rupees of the Rs 80 lakh crore black money," Vallabh said.

Congress added that deposits and investments from dubious sources had increased in places like Hong Kong and Luxembourg and other tax havens during the BJP regime. AICC also made light of the Fugitives Economic Offenders Bill brought by government, saying it was only aimed at "creating an image that the government was going after big defaulters and black money when it was not so in reality".

Gowda mocked that big defaulters like Nirav Modi , Vijay Mallya , Mehul Choksi had run away from the country under the Modi regime and the government was bringing a law instead of bringing them back. He said it was too much of a coincidence that Choksi got the Antigua passport just three months after Narendra Modi met Antigua's PM.

