Disputing former Greek finance minister George Papaconstantinou’s assertion that a list of 2,062 Greeks with $1.95 billion in secret Swiss bank accounts he received in 2010 from then French finance chief Christine Lagarde was “unofficial and confidential,” French authorities said it was designed to be used to help find tax cheats.
Papaconstantinou is now being probed by a Parliamentary committee because the names of three of his relatives were erased from the original CD given to him. He said the list disappeared but denied any wrongdoing. The list still hasn’t been checked for tax evaders although it’s been in the possession of current Finance Minister Yannis Stournaras for months.
Papaconstantinou’s successor as finance chief, current PASOK Socialist leader Evangelos Venizelos, also had a copy but didn’t act on it because he also claimed that because the information came off a larger CD stolen from the Geneva, Switzerland branch of HSBC that it couldn’t legally be used. The French disputed that too but Venizelos isn’t being investigated. He is a coalition partner in the adminstration of Prime Minister Antonis Samaras, the New Democracy Conservative party leader.
A September 2010 letter from the French authorities to the Greece’s ambassador in Paris clearly states that the information was being provided for the purposes of tax collection only and the French said that’s why it was passed on to Greece, and that other countries were also using it in the hunt for tax cheats. Tax evaders in Greece owe more than $70 billion but have largely gone unpunished as the government has preferred to cut pay, raise taxes and slash pensions of workers to meet demands of international lenders to rein in a runaway $390 billion debt.
The French assertions were heard by the committee probing Papaconstantinou. The understanding that the information would be used for tax-collection purposes is revealed in correspondence between the French finance ministry and the Greek ambassador in Paris.
A letter dated 29 September 2010 from the French authorities to the Greek ambassador, Costas Halastanis, states: “The information that you are being provided with is in accordance with article 23 of the tax treaty between France and Greece, dated 21 August 1963, and in accordance with article 2 of the Directive 77/799/EEC, dated 19 December 1977, as amended.”
“I remind you that in accordance with article 7 of that directive amd with the above-mentioned provisions, such information must be kept confidential and used only for tax-related purposes,” the French letter continued. In January, Halastanis claimed that he had lost the letter, just as Papaconstantinou said he had lost the list.
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