Advertisement

Ex-Greek Finance Minister Faces Fraud Charge

Ex-Greek Finance Minister Faces Fraud Charge

A Greek parliamentary committee has recommended that a former finance minister be indicted for allegedly wiping out the names of his relatives from a list of suspected tax cheats in the biggest tax evasion scandal in decades.

Opposition parliamentarians have called for the scope of the potential indictment against George Papaconstantinou to be broadened to include former prime minister George Papandreou and Mr Papaconstantinou’s successor, Evangelos Venizelos.

"We don't want this procedure to stop," Panos Skourletis, spokesman for the main opposition Syriza party told Sky News.

"There are strong indications that other politicians are also implicated and we want them, including Mr Venizelos, to return for further clarifications."

Mr Papaconstantinou, a prominent economist reviled by many of his compatriots for signing up Greece to its first international bailout and years of austerity, is accused of breach of faith and duty for tampering with a state document, deleting the names of three relatives from a list of wealthy Greeks with more than $2bn (£1.3bn) savings stashed away in Swiss bank accounts.

The alleged cover-up, exposed late last year, has gripped Greeks for months, stoking public anger while underscoring long-standing failures by the state to tackle widespread tax evasion.

Mr Papaconstantinou has denied any criminal wrongdoing but has admitted receiving a digital version of the tax cheats list from Christine Lagarde, the head of the International Monetary Fund, when she was France's finance minister in 2010.

The list, however, went "missing", according to Mr Papaconstantinou, after a copy was passed on to the country's financial police more than a year later.

His successor, now the head of the socialist PASOK government and part of an awkward coalition steering Greece to financial recovery, turned up a copy in 2012, when the murky tale came to light.

"If this case closes with [Mr] Papaconstantinou's prosecution alone then it will be impossible to re-open it and re-try with additional prosecutions," Mr Skourletis warned.

Since the parliamentary probe kicked off earlier this year, financial police have traced nearly 9 million euros in undeclared assets to the Geneva-based HSBC accounts of three of Mr Papaconstantinou's relatives.

No sums have come into Greece's cash-starved state coffers.

Contacted on Friday, Mr Papaconstantinou refused to comment on the committee's recommendation.

"I will speak in Parliament," he told Sky News.