Current Affairs For SSC CGL Exam - 22 June, 2014

Current Affairs For SSC CGL Exam

In a major boost to India’s fight against black money, Switzerland has prepared a list of Indians suspected to have stashed un-taxed wealth in Swiss banks and the details are being shared with Indian government.
The names of these Indian individuals and entities have come under the scanner of the Swiss authorities during an ongoing exercise to identify real beneficiary/owners of funds held in various banks operating in Switzerland, a senior Swiss government official said.
These individuals and entities are suspected to have held un-taxed money in Swiss banks through structures like trusts, domiciliary companies and other legal entities based out of countries other than India.

India has moved up to 58th rank in terms of foreign money lying with Swiss banks, but it accounts for a meagre 0.15 per cent of an estimated $1.6 trillion total global wealth held in Switzerland’s banking system.
The U.K. has retained its top position with highest share of close to 20 per cent of global wealth in Swiss banking system, followed by the U.S., West Indies, Germany and Guernsey in the top-five in terms of exposure to banks in Switzerland.
Amid much hue and cry over huge amounts of illicit wealth stashed by Indians in Swiss banks, the latest official data released by Switzerland’s central banking authority SNB shows that Indian money in Swiss banks rose by 43 per cent during 2013 to close to Rs. 14,000 crore (2.03 billion Swiss francs), pushing its global ranking up from 70th at the end of 2012.
The rankings are based on the direct client exposure as also the funds held through ‘fiduciaries’ or wealth managers with a total of 283 banks in Switzerland.

U.N. cultural agency Unesco granted its prized World Heritage status to a prehistoric cave in southern France containing the earliest known figurative drawings.
Delegates at Unesco’s World Heritage Committee voted to grant the status to the Grotte Chauvet at a gathering in Doha, where they are considering cultural and natural wonders for inclusion on the U.N. list.
The cave in the Ardeche region, which survived sealed off for millennia before its discovery in 1994, contains more than 1,000 drawings dating back some 36,000 years to what is believed to be the first human culture in Europe.

India’s Aditya Patel won the first race in Jerez, Spain along with Portuguese teammate Cesar Campanico in the International GT Open Series.The latter’s spectacular qualifying lap ensured the pole position.
Campanico lost the lead to Daniel Zampieri in the first race on the run to the first corner, but managed to cling on to the second spot, even when leading the GT3 class for the rest of the stint. Driving an Audi R8, Patel took over at the halfway mark but lost nearly 15 seconds in a pit lane miscommunication.
He pushed hard, competing against the Ferrari of Roman Mavlanov and Zampieri, and managed second place overeall. The Indian-Portuguese team won the GT3 category easily.

BCCI’s president-in-exile N. Srinivasan is set to take over as the chairman of the International Cricket Council (ICC) at this week’s annual conference in Melbourne.
BCCI secretary Sanjay Patel confirmed that Srinivasan was going to Melbourne. “By the month-end, India will take a leading role in the ICC.