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| English: Evangelos Venizelos, press conference, Komotini 24.05.2007. Ελληνικά: Ευάγγελος Βενιζέλος, συνέντευξη τύπου στα μέσα μαζικής ενημέρωσης της Κομοτηνής. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
Eureka Greek officials finally found the mystery list of Swiss account holders, or suspected tax evaders! The news of the list, which dominated most of the news sites on Tuesday, concerns details of some 2,000 very wealthy Greek bank holders in Switzerland and believe it or not, after being in Greek hands for almost 18 months it was finally delivered to a special prosecutor by Stelios Stasinopoulos, the head of Greece's economic crimes unit (SDOE).
What an adventure! The discovery of the list took almost a week to accomplish and even involved the Greek intelligence agency, two former finance ministers and God knows who or what else! Everyone was pointing here, pointing there, and trying to find a damn list.
So who had the list?
Surprise, surprise... Evangelos Venizelos had the list!
Yes ladies and gentlemen, the leader of PASOK Mr. Evangelos Venizelos was holding this list, while the government and practically all of its agencies were looking for the list! He says that it was given to him by the former head of the Financial Crimes Squad (SDOE), Yiannis Diotis.
The list was apparently first compiled by French authorities in 2010 and hand delivered by IMF Chief Christine Lagarde to former Finance Minister Giorgos Papakonstantinou. When asked about the list, Papakonstantinou maintained that he had passed the contentious CD over to SDOE, which at the time was headed by Yiannis Kapeleris, and then somewhere along the line the data just mysteriously disappeared.
The data on the CD was leaked by a former HSBC bank employee in Switzerland by the name of Falciani. The Swiss allege Falciani passed confidential data he took from HSBC in Geneva to French tax authorities, breaching Swiss banking secrecy laws, before absconding to France. An international warrant for his arrest was issued by the Swiss in August 2010, a warrant ignored by the French as they do not extradite their own citizens. In 2009, Falciani said he leaked the data to French authorities, telling France 2 television the action was his civic duty.
The theft triggered a brief spat between Switzerland and France when the French authorities announced they would use the data to probe suspected evasion by French taxpayers with secret Swiss accounts. However Paris and Bern reached a deal to resolve the row. As part of an agreement to move forward on a double taxation accord, France said it would not request administrative assistance in obtaining information about suspected tax evaders whose details were contained in the stolen data, and it agreed to provide Switzerland with copies.
Strict secrecy rules, which have helped Switzerland build up a $2 trillion (SFr2 trillion) offshore banking sector, have come under pressure as governments around the world look to clamp down on tax avoidance in the aftermath of the financial crisis.
Venizelos claims that because the information was illegally obtained then the data on the CDS cannot be used to chase down wealthy tax evaders.
(Editor - Yeah... good one)
More exactly, Venizelos said that the data contained on it did not constitute a record that was submitted by due legal process to his service and "therefore could not be subject to legal inquiry and certainly not to publication." He also had to audacity to question 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.
Ignoring Venizelos' obviously ridiculous statements, Supreme Court prosecutor Nikos Pantelis on Tuesday told reporters that the material was eligible for use "as it came from an official state representative through diplomatic channels.
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