Govt To Adopt EU Plan to Bring Back Undeclared Funds

The Greek government will be submitting a legislation to Parliament this week that aims to recover funds that were taken out of Greek banks or that were obtained through criminal activities. Those who return such funds will be spared prison time.

Officials estimate that the new measures will recover at least 2.5 billion Euros.

The legislation foresees that citizens -who are suspected and/or charged with tax evasion, money laundering, submitting inaccurate sources of wealth declarations or fraud- will be able to secure lenient treatment if they return these funds back to Greece. If the money is returned before the suspect faces a judge, then they will only get slapped with a three-year sentence instead of life term. If on the other, the funds are returned  before the case goes to trial, then the life term sentence will be reduced to seven years, or 10 years if the money is returned by the time the case goes to appeal. The new law also allows authorities to seize and liquidate the properties of suspects charged with defrauding the Greek state from these undeclared funds.

Similar systems have already been put into effect in other European countries such as Germany, where out of 4.5 million cases where suspects could pay to be spared jail time, only 700,000 ended up going to trial.