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Lagarde List Probe Finds Rampant Tax CheatingMore than 3 1/2 years after first receiving it, Greece is speeding the pace of looking into a list of 2,062 citizens with $1.95 billion in secret Swiss bank accounts and after only 72 inspections has found the depositors owe between 5,000 to 5 million euros each in unpaid taxes.That was discovered by the Financial Crimes Squad (SDOE) which has only had 172 cases assigned so far, little more than eight percent of the total, showing the potential for massive tax fraud. No one on the list has been prosecuted.The probe began last year but was overwhelming, authorities said, but added they’ve finally made some progress after increasing the number of staff on the case from four to 16. The agency previously said it didn’t have investigators skilled at checking bank records.
........"Financial Crimes Squad... didn’t have investigators skilled at checking bank records" Competance to do the job? Nah, an idea that'll never catch on. They did, presumably, have the right family connections, which is what really matters.
Checks on 141 of the 2,055 names included on the so-called Lagarde list of depositors have been completed and at least another 50 are currently under investigation, Kathimerini has learned.The inspections that have been carried out so far by financial prosecutors and the Financial Crimes Squad (SDOE) have led to the government demanding some 25 million euros in unpaid taxes from the savers.Kathimerini understands that none of the people who have so far been found to have evaded taxes are high-profile figures.One of the depositors discovered to have ignored tax rules had some 180 million euros in deposits but was only declaring an income of around 17,000 euros.A Supreme Court judicial council is due to decide by next month if former Finance Minister Giorgos Papaconstantinou, who was in office when his then French counterpart, Christine Lagarde, passed on the depositors’ details, should face a special court to answer accusations that he doctored the list and failed to ensure it was investigated properly.
Judicial authorities are expected to launch an investigation into claims by International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde that she received death threats after pushing for a crackdown on Greek tax evasion, Kathimerini understands.In an interview with the Financial Times published last Friday, Lagarde was quoted as saying that her criticism of Greek tax evasion led to warnings. “I better not say too much because, you know, when I have talked about Greece and its taxes before, I got death threats and we had to increase security,” she said. “But is the shipping industry really paying its taxes? Are others? I don’t think so.”
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Topic: The laggard list (Read 8868 times)
