The Best of GRReporter
flag_bg flag_gr flag_gb

The Greek parliament like Villa ''Lagard''

11 January 2013 / 17:01:26  GRReporter
5223 reads

In June 2011, the cabinet of George Papandreou reshuffled. Finance Minister George Papakonstantinou was replaced by Evangelos Venizelos, who received the already familiar USB with the names from the "Lagarde List" from the head of the tax services (SDOE) Yiannis Diotis. He, in turn, said that he could not investigate the people on a list that had been the result of a theft.
 
Diotis believed that he could not use the data from the "Lagarde List" to combat tax crime because they were obtained illegally. In 2009, an employee at the Swiss branch of HSBC downloaded a list from the archives of the Bank as part of his fight against tax evasion. It cost him his job and a series of lawsuits, but in the end, the risky action he had taken resulted in some punishment. After some hesitation, the tax and judicial authorities in countries such as Germany, France, Portugal and Spain allowed the names downloaded illegally to undergo an examination. As a result, the treasuries of the aforementioned countries have collected billions of euro from the revealed undeclared incomes. The employee's name is Falciani and the names on the "Lagarde List" are the result of his actions.
 
In Greece, however, a long time had passed before the list started to attract the public attention. It had been almost a year since Diotis had given Venizelos the "Lagarde List", but nothing was done to determine whether the people on it were tax offenders or not. PASOK, and namely Evangelos Venizelos, tacitly accused Diotis of having, he himself, given the list to the journalist Kostas Vaxevanis who published it in the HOT DOC magazine. This was the beginning of the new saga about the names of the owners of bank accounts in Switzerland.

Now that the list has attracted the attention of the public, a new question comes to the fore. "How do we know that this is the original file that contains all the data sent by the French authorities?"

The Finance Minister at the time, Yiannis Stournaras, requested the French government to send an exact copy of the file that Athens had received in 2010 to see if there were any missing names. In December 2012, the French authorities met Stournaras’ request and it turned out that the original "Lagarde List" contained 2,062 names. The list, which was in Athens originally, did not contain the names of three relatives of George Papakosntantinou and it seems that he had removed them personally. Papakonstantinou denies having deleted names alone and insists that there is a conspiracy against him.
 
The recent data on the case that have become available support his thesis somewhat. The USB memory that the head of the tax services Yiannis Diotis gave Evangelos Venizelos was dated 8 July 2011. This means that it is not the original list Papakonstantinou had submitted to the tax services and that someone else might have removed the names of the three relatives of the former minister.

The investigation continues but the more details come to light, the more difficult it becomes to find out who wanted the "Lagarde List" to remain a secret, why and on what grounds. Greek journalists comment that the suspects are probably more than one. So, it seems that it affects the highest echelons of Greek politics and clearing the parliament from tax criminals will take much more time and effort than the clearing of Villa Amalia.

Tags: EconomyLagardeScandalHSBCBank accountsDeputies
SUPPORT US!
GRReporter’s content is brought to you for free 7 days a week by a team of highly professional journalists, translators, photographers, operators, software developers, designers. If you like and follow our work, consider whether you could support us financially with an amount at your choice.
Subscription
You can support us only once as well.
blog comments powered by Disqus