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The opening of deputies' Swiss bank accounts is a fiasco

15 September 2012 / 15:09:10  GRReporter
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With a delay of 6 months, the parliament presented the negative response of the Swiss authorities to opening bank accounts which might be of Greek deputies, as they are citing banking secrecy, which has thus led to the fiasco of this initiative.

It is noted that last spring the then president of parliament Filippos Petsalnikos and responsible vice-president Evangelos Argiris asked all deputies to authorize the National Bank of Greece and the Union of Greek Banks to request information by Swiss authorities about possible undeclared bank accounts of politicians. In practice, all members of parliament signed a declaration, in which they noted that they are authorizing the Greek authorities to investigate whether they have accounts in Switzerland.

This specific request was answered by Swiss authorities by mail as early as in April and May, with a reply that the laws do not allow them to provide the information required and they also note: "As we have already answered in our emails from 25 April and 11 May, the policy of the Swiss banks does not include the possibility to present such demands to our members. Members of parliament can directly contact their banks if they have accounts in Switzerland. Anyway, Swiss banks are not obliged to confirm that a particular person does not have an account in them. A fact is also that the policy of certain banks is not to confirm such negative claims."

After the reactions caused by the delayed publication of the Swiss authorities' negative responses, vice-president of the parliament and chairman of the commission for financial control of deputies from all parties, Athanassis Nakos, said that on 12 September the first meeting of the enlarged board for financial control was convened. At this meeting, the chairman informed the committee members from all parties, lawyers and teachers involved in the commission, about the existence of the letter from the Union of Swiss banks, a copy of which was given to everybody the next day. Not only did the chairman nopt hide the letter, but quite the opposite - he presented it to all the members of the committee.

Tags: Greece Switzerland banks secret accounts deputies
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