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Greek Tax Cheat Breaks Withdrawn

BriefcaseMoney1After hostile reaction, the Greek government said it would not go ahead with plans to give tax cheats an 80 percent discount on fines they would have to pay for breaking the law, including some 2,062 people with $1.95 billion in secret Swiss bank accounts, the so-called Lagarde List, that has created a scandal and investigation into a former finance minister.
The tax evaders, who owe $70 billion, would have been given leniency at the same time the government is pursuing people who do pay their taxes for 100 percent of what they owe. Under the amendment, Greeks who hid their money in foreign bank accounts would have received big breaks while those who kept their money in Greek banks would have been liable to pay the full amount of taxes due.
The newspaper Kathimerini said that draft legislation submitted to Parliament would allow tax cheats to pay only 20 percent of what they owe, including interest, if they paid immediately, or 40 percent if they paid in six installments. There was no explanation why they weren’t being required to pay 100 percent as taxpayers do. There was also no explanation why the tax cheats aren’t being prosecuted for violating the law.
Kathimerini said the scheme didn’t meet the approval of Greece’s international lenders, the Troika of the European Union-International Monetary Fund-European Central Bank (EU-IMF-ECB) which has been pushing the government to collect from tax evaders who owe $70 billion while acknowledging that as little as 20 percent could be collected because the cases are so old and many businesses who owe no loner exist.
Kathimerini understands that the amendment, which drew negative publicity in reports that tied it to the Lagarde list, met with the disapproval of the country’s international lenders, the Troika of the European Union-International Monetary Fund-European Central Bank (EU-IMF-ECB) that has been pushing the government to collect from tax cheats who owe $70 billion and have largely escaped prosecution.
At the same time, a Parliamentary committee was continuing its tedious pace of probing the Lagarde List, named for former French finance minister Christine Lagarde who gave it to then Greek finance minister George Papaconstantinou in 2010. It said it went missing and the lawmakers are trying to find out who removed the names of three of his relatives. Lagarde is now head of the IMF.
They have made almost no progress despite meeting on and off for more than two months and hit another roadblock when Papaconstantinou’s relatives whose names had been erased refused to testify. They had only been invited to do so, not compelled. The committee is reportedly at a crossroads how to proceed.
The account holders, two of Papaconstantinou’s cousins and their spouses, said they had already explained that the money had been transferred abroad legally. The ex-minister’s relatives also claimed they did not have a close relationship with Papaconstantinou due to political differences and that if  he had wanted to secretly remove their names from the list, he would have done so to protect his own reputation, not theirs.
Sources told Kathimerini that lawmakers on the committee decided to wait for a report into the accounts held by Papaconstantinou’s relatives before deciding whether to force them to testify in person, but it was not reported whether they will be made to appear.

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