Greece's coalition government on Monday called for the indictment of former Finance Minister George Papakonstantinou over allegations that he tampered with the controversial "Lagarde list" containing the names of Greek depositors at the HSBC bank in Switzerland.
The fact that details of three accounts from just over 2,000 were missing from the list prosecutors had been investigating was discovered after Greek authorities obtained from the French government the original version of the list two weeks ago. The three accounts belong to Papakonstantinou’s two cousins and their husbands, according to prosecutors who checked the two versions of the list with the help of the Financial Crimes Squad (SDOE).
Some seventy-one deputies from the three-party coalition signed the proposal to indict Papakonstantinou and he is now to face a parliamentary inquiry and answer to charges of doctoring an official document and breach of duty. These are offenses that carry a maximum 10-year jail term, according to legal experts.
Papakonstantinou, 51, who negotiated Greece's first international bailout and was unpopular in the country for presiding over the government's first round of austerity measures, has denied any wrongdoing. He has angrily denied the allegations, insisting the names were removed without his knowledge. In fact he has hinted that "others" were seeking to incriminate him.
"I have not made any intervention in the details that I asked for and received from the French authorities," Mr. Papakonstantinou wrote on his personal website Friday. "If there are accounts on the list that relate to people in my wider family environment, this is something that I did not know of until today."
In an interview with the Sunday Edition of "To Ethnos" newspaper Papakostantinou repeated his claims that he did not tamper with the list, which was given to him by the then French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde in 2010. At the same time, the former finance minister also raised questions about the role of PASOK leader Evangelos Venizelos, who succeeded him as finance minister in 2011. Papakonstantinou has said in previous testimony that he handed the information to SDOE but they didn't act on it, but the head of SDOE said that his department had received only 10 names.
When word of the Lagarde List became public in recent months, Mr. Venizelos initially denied knowledge of it. Later, in early October, he passed a flash drive with a list of accounts to the prime minister's office. He has said he hadn't pressed tax police to pursue the names on the list, saying lawyers had told him the information couldn't be acted upon because it had been obtained illegally from HSBC.
On its part, the main opposition SYRIZA party is pressing for George Papandreou, who was prime minister when the alleged doctoring took place, to face an inquiry.
In October, Kostas Vaxevanis, a Greek investigative journalist published a version of the list in his magazine Hot Doc, with the names, companies and professions of those associated with 2,059 accounts, but not the monetary values. It included the wife of one former conservative minister and the name of a second, now deceased, and a current adviser to Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras.
The Lagarde List, is actually data obtained by former employees of the Geneva branch of HSBC who electronically copied details of 24,000 clients. The information then wound up in the hands of French, Italian and Spanish authorities. All three countries then used this information to recover unpaid taxes. In late 2010, Ms. Lagarde, now head of the International Monetary Fund, gave a copy of the disc containing information on Greek account-holders to her Greek counterpart, Mr. Papakostantinou.
The news has definitely soured public opinion in Greece towards politicians and at the same time deepened the saga surrounding the list of Greeks with Swiss accounts. Greek citizens argue that austerity measures undertaken over the last three years have struck disproportionately at the country's poor, and that the government has done a little to crack down on tax evasion by the rich or tackle corruption by the Greece's rich elite.
(Combined reports)
Posts
