GREEK TAX EVASION WAR ESCALATES

Those heinous socialist revolutionaries, The French, with their pinko, communist anti-Free Markets ideas of  Liberté, égalité, fraternité, bought data stolen from Switzerland, with 130,000 names of secret bank account holders. Christine Lagarde, then French Finance Minister, met a request by the Greek Finance Minister for the Greek names on the list. There are 2,000 top Greeks listed.

An investigation into the finances of a sample of those listed found insufficient licit funds to fill their Swiss Accounts - but, surprise, surprise, this anomaly was not followed up by the tax collectors. The Finance Minister, Papaconstantinou, accused the tax authorities of being too scared of the big names listed to take recovery action. The list was then  "LOST" by Greek officials. In the face of his countrymen going without food, jobs or a future, this annoyed magazine editor Kostas Vaxevanis who published all 2,000 names.

In an archetypal Big Brother NewSpeak reversal, the innocent whistle-blower was arrested and is now being dragged through court by the authorities, accused of invasion of privacy.

The battle lines are being drawn; between the sensitive, shy tax-evading Greeks (or at least a few of them) protected and aided by the Greek government, and the increasingly angry mob, led by a journalist. In the birthplace of democracy - will the brave publisher representing The People be damned? The dodgers say the "stolen" list cannot be used in Greek Law to prosecute them for tax-evasion; a nice legal point which might not stand the scrutiny of a revolutionary court.

Minister Papaconstantinou says there is an even longer list of 54,000 Greek nation robbers who siphoned off $22 billion to tax-havens, compiled by the Bank of Greece. I assume the accompanying paper-work claims tax-relief on assets in Greece and is, as usual, so imaginatively fabricated as to amount to a set of fraudulent conspiracies. This is apparently an "official" list and so can be used in Greek Law to get the money back.

Maybe this escalating row between poor but honest and rich but dishonest Greeks will pave the way for rapid mass repatriation of substantial funds, via back-duty-tax-cases, and be an exemplar for all other OECD countries to recover their share of the $21 trillion of lost liquidity. Releasing this inert buried treasure, would quickly get the world economy back on track. It must be recovered and invested in the communities from which it was taken.  ...Irrespective of the hurt private feelings of the hoarders.

I wonder what Angela Merkel "feels" about the issues.

PS - Remember, if you have been professionally advised on such tax-planning - and it goes wrong - you will be covered for losses by your accountant's and lawyer's Professional Indemnity Insurance (PII) - NIL DESPARANDUM.

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