Troika Target Of Truculence As Greek Tax Evaders Terrified
The Troika technical team was chased from their Greek offices on Tuesday by an angry mob of Muni workers (who proclaimed that "they got our labor rights and conditions back to the Middle Ages"). As KeepTalkingGreece notes, this is the third incident in 24 hours as since the team arrived they have had water bottle thrown at them as well as cars kicked and 'hurled coffees'. The clip below shows the Troika member looking rather anxious as he runs from the crowd (and NewsIt reported a female Troika member seeking refuge in a bookstore). It is not just the municipal workers who are in fear though, as GreekReporter notes the unbelievable story of the re-appearance of a 'mysterious' CD containing the names of 2000 ultra-rich Greek Swiss-bank account-holders is now back in the hands of the Greek government as they press for bilateral taxation on those huge deposits. It seems rich and poor alike are not happy with the Troika's exposure of tax cheats across the desparate nation.
Via KeepTalkingGreece:
Trash cans and debris piled up in front of the Troika offices in Greece...
and the video of the anxious-looking Troika member running from the crowd..
and the incredibly 'dodgy' sounding story of the mysterious CD...
Via GreekReporter: Venizelos Gives List of 2,000 Greeks With Swiss Deposits
Unbelievable!... is it any wonder the Germans are a little apprehensive? or that the Greek people are revolting?A list of some 2,000 Greeks with large deposits in a Swiss bank – that had been on a missing CD – was given to the government on Oct. 2 by PASOK leader Evangelos Venizelos, who said he had been given the information while he was finance minister in a former government but didn’t act on it because it was not legally obtained.
The list is thought to have been first compiled by French authorities in 2010 and submitted to then-Finance Minister George Papaconstantinou by his French counterpart Christine Lagarde, who now heads the International Monetary Fund, one of the Troika of international lenders providing Greece with rescue loans.
Venizelos is now in the coalition government headed by New Democracy leader and Prime Minister Antonis Samaras and the tiny Democratic Left and said he had been given the list by the former head of the Financial Crimes Squad SDOE Yiannis Dotis, who was replaced by a friend of Samaras’ just as an investigation into alleged high-level tax evaders was proceeding.
Papaconstantinou later claimed that he had passed the contentious CD over to SDOE, which at the time was headed by Yiannis Kapeleris, and that somewhere along the line the data went “missing,” although no one could account for it.
Current Finance Minister Yannis Stournaras told the Financial Times that he would make a “priority” of tracking down the CD containing the names of about 2,000 Greeks who had deposited money in the Geneva branch of HSBC. “I first learnt of its existence last week from the newspapers . . . but if SDOE can’t track it down, then we’ll ask our European partners for another copy,” Stournaras told the FT.
Venizelos said that Diotis had informed him of the contents of the list in August 2011, but had expressed the opinion that the CD was presented to him “unofficially” by Papaconstantinou and that the data contained on it “do not constitute a record that was submitted by due legal process to my service and therefore cannot be subject to legal inquiry and certainly not to publication.
On Oct. 2, he repeated what he said were reservations from Diotis about the legality of the list and said that any questionable use of the data could jeopardize Greece’s efforts to convince Swiss authorities to release the details of account holders in the country who are suspected to tax evasion or other financial crimes.
“Our main priority then as now is to strike a bilateral agreement between Greece and Switzerland to tax the deposits of Greeks in Switzerland along the same lines of similar agreements signed with Germany and the United Kingdom,” Venizelos said. “I hope that the agreement will be completed soon and will benefit public revenues,” he added.
In the meantime, the government is trying to keep the list secret to prevent another embarrassing gaffe after the names of 33 politicians, including seven former ministers, said to be under review to explain huge sums in their bank accounts and whether they evaded taxes, was leaked to media sources and put on the Internet.
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