Slashdot Mirror
Journalist Arrested In Greece For Publishing List of Possible Tax-Evaders
kyriacos writes "The Greek government is charging journalist Kostas Vaxevanis with violation of the data privacy law for publishing a list of about 2,000 Greeks who hold accounts with the HSBC bank in Switzerland. While more and more austerity measures are being taken against the people of Greece, there is still no investigation of tax evasion for the people on this list by the government. The list has been in the possession of the Greek government since 2010."
Evading tax is every Greeks' right and what has made Greece the economic powerhouse it is today.
If you're in Greece and don't already have your money out of the country, you're an idiot. This isn't about taxes. It's about Greece threatening to leave the euro area, switch to a local currency (bring back the drachma!), and printing money to get out of their financial disaster. People in Greece, as EU residents, have no obligation to participate in this. The EU encourages cross-border banking. So everybody with any significant cash is moving it to German, French, or Swiss banks in case the axe falls.
while the government is in possesion of a list of people those people in turn are in possesion of the government.
Tax records are public documents in Finland. In fact, they are published as an annual bestseller (two pieces of information are listed: the reported annual income and the total tax).
The logic is the same as with court records. The citizens need to be able to trust that the tax system treats everybody fairly.
That's not the real scandal, or should I say is part of it. The real scandal is that the list has been in the government's hands for a couple of years and it has done nothing about it ( it's the same list leaked by a swiss man, and bought and used by the german, US and other governments to collect taxes ). Ex-ministers are saying that a) either they couldn't use the list because the data was not acquired legally or b) we gave the list to the greek IRS but they didn't do anything. There is even an ex-minister ( current leader of pasok ) who admitted he took the usb stick with the list to his home after he resigned from his position.
Obama promised they would go after big tax cheats if they only knew who they were.
Obama promised whistle-blowers would be protected - even paid a reward.
In 2 seperate well documented cases, people working on computers in Swiss banks copied and provided huge lists of US plutocrats including many congressmen, former presidents and law enforcement personel. In some cases, hundreds of millions of dollars had been deposited in accounts of people who only officially make $120K a year.
So were these guys protected and paid a reward by the Obama administration?
Of course not - they were chased around the world like Osama and then dissappeared into solitary confinement without lawyers like enemy combatants.
That's the truth about corruption at the very highest levels in all the major countries, by all the major parties.
Government is organized crime.
Damage done.. All except for cutting his balls off.
I know a man... There was a woman who was threatening him with murder, and boasted about murdering someone in another state. The woman came in and stole a bunch of this man's possessions when he was away from his house. This man tape recorded her confessing to the murder in the other state and threatening him with murder too. When he went to police, they charged him for violating the wiretap laws and did nothing to her!
I just think these wiretap laws are to protect elite people from being charged with shady deals. The government constantly wiretaps us. We should be able to record our conversations in case of threats.
God spoke to me
This guy deserves every bit of it.
You don't just go around accusing people of criminal activity. Most likely there are people on that list who are acting within the law, and now everyone is going to treat them like criminals.
FYI, different countries have different laws.
Hey many billions -- nay, TRILLIONS -- of dollars have wealthy individuals from around the globe hidden in Swiss bank accounts?
Under any other circumstances, nations would ban trade with Switzerland unless it shared bank account data with their local tax office. Alas, it's the same fat cats that run our countries who shield their wealth in Switzerland.
It was eye opening when that disgruntled IT fellow burned a copy of bank account data onto a couple of DVD's and then embarked on a global tour of selling to each country a list of their citizens who had money stashed in Switzerland.
Is he still alive?
why you need to specifically have a swiss account and not say a more close to home one ?
why do you require a bank account that wont report the balance
why do you require....oh never mind you must be one on the list.
Am I missing something here? I have a savings account with HSBC, and I'm not evading shit.
That said, having spent time in Greece, it's a giggle that having an account at HSBC would be prima facia evidence of tax evasion. From what I gathered, tax evasion was a national pastime. Ever notice all the occupied buildings in Greece with unfinished top stories with rebar sticking up? That's apparently because they don't start charging property tax until the building is "finished"...
Taxing your way out of an economic crisis is only feasible in the [very] short term.
Poor economic choices on the part of the Greek gov't are to blame here...but they're too busy screwing over their people to accept responsibility and make progress toward actual corrections.
What else can happen when an unstoppable force collides with an immovable object?
Hey many billions -- nay, TRILLIONS -- of dollars have wealthy individuals from around the globe hidden in Swiss bank accounts?
Since you ask, around 21-32 trillion: as much as the US and Japanese economies combined.
http://www.taxjustice.net/cms/upload/pdf/The_Price_of_Offshore_Revisited_Presser_120722.pdf
That includes all off shore accounts, not just Swiss.
> The list has been in the possession of the Greek government since 2010
Sounds to me more like the people of Greece should be arresting the Greek government.
It is quite possible that is not because those people have a bank account with HSBC, but what else do they have and what do they do. Perhaps some senior public servants? Perhaps some powerful entreperneurs (Yes that is a French word) that can influence law makers. Somehow, this offended some people that was too risky to offend.
This is a classic case of government panicking when they lose control of information and thus power. I find when a government spends too much time controlling information they tend to forget what they are actually supposed to be doing. I love how this compares to a functioning government like Norway where you can access people's tax records online. There are a few odd rules though; there is a time window and I believe that people know who has accessed their records. Thus the open information includes knowing which of your neighbours are nosy. But the best part is the first year they went online the public found famous rich people claiming $150,000 in income resulting in investigations.
Not sure why this new worthy of Slashdot? It's just general news.
Firstly, the list is stolen so could the Greek government legally use it?
Secondly, tax evasion is illegal but tax avoidance is not. Since when does having an off-shore account prove anything more than you money outside saved the country?
Thirdly, while the penalty is harsh given the unimportant nature of the information publish the principle and crime is valid. If it was a leaked list of patient medial records for off shore treatments would it acceptable?
Who thought that publishing the phone book qualified as journalism?
How to get money from poor people. Get 'em to believe what you tell 'em, then take them for all they are worth and sell them down the river.
All through history, rich have taken from the poor by playing them using trust and greed. Lotteries. Religion. Gambling. Medicine shows. "Insurance".
Lately, its been the dot-com bomb, followed by real-estate, and I am pretty confident the next "golden cow" for the rich is selling the middle class a soon-to-be highly depreciated rather useless soft yellow metal, while the rich snap up commodities, food, energy, and critical industrial metals.
You should never believe anything spoken through a microphone.
Streisand effect strong is with this government.
The Pirate Party of Greece has already issued a statement positioning itself on this matter: http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=el&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pirateparty.gr%2F2012%2F10%2Fvaxevanis-lista%2F
He published a list (a stolen one, no less) of people with foreign bank accounts, something entirely unremarkable for rich people to have.
From the article:
"The prosecutor issued a warrant for Vaxevanis's arrest because he published a list of names without special permission and violated the law on personal data," a police official told Reuters.
"There is no proof that the persons or companies included in that list have violated the law. There is no evidence that they violated the law on tax evasion or money laundering."
Data privacy - something Slashdotters make a big song and dance about, unless it's about some non-grata group, in which case they conveniently forget about it.
While more and more austerity measures are being taken against the people of Greece, there is still no investigation of tax evasion for the people on this list by the government.
Investigation into tax-evasion is not a cost-effective way of reducing deficits. Just because people are on "the list" does not necessarily mean they are guilty. And even if they are, it is unlikely that the taxes and penalties recovered provide a significant benefit.
Investigations are more of a way of deterring non-compliance; to the extent that the deterrent is effective, it is useful.. Once a certain rate of compliance is reached, there is only a certain amount of investigation that is cost-effective
Their debt is priced in Euros for repayment in Euros, inflation in Drachmas does not devalue their debt.
This is not the US$, the game of borrow "3 factories worth of dollars and repay 2 factories worth of dollars" (borrow $1 billion one year, pay back $1.1 billion in 5 or 10 years time when the dollar is worth much less and can buy less) does not work for Greece.
Their borrowing is largely from abroad, mostly other EU countries, mostly in Euros.
Greece thankfully is an insignificant part of the Eurozone (2.5%) and the only real problem with it, is it lets others talk down the Euro and spout crap like "infection spreading" as if debt is contagious. Which is probably the only reason they haven't stopped lending to them already.
Really you can't spend more money than you raise in taxes forever, sooner or later it comes back to bite you.
Euro zone is profitable, it has a surplus.
" Even if there were only two countries in the Euro one of the two would have the same basic problem that greece has - they're forcibly less competitive than the other one, and they aren't getting enough payments out of it."
Giving them separate currencies doesn't fix any imbalance. Because you can't deflate one currency against the other indefinitely without a flight of capital to the more stable currency. No capital means the deflating countries declines at a faster rate. You've simply made things worse.
The fix is to fix the imbalance in the economy. That does not mean that Greece needs to be as successful as Germany, it means that they need to stop LIVING like they're as successful as Germany.
"Aside from the fact that british did that for 250 year and are still doing it and their country hasn't imploded"
Britains last trade surplus with the EU was in 2000, their biggest problem right now is the Euro (also came in 2000), it's no longer necessary to lend to the UK in loans that repay in GBP. This is why Bank of England has been buying treasuries via 'quantitative easing' BECAUSE OTHER COUNTRIES DON'T WANT THEM.
However if you want to look over the longer term, fair enough. Hows the empire doing? Good?
Except that's rubbish, he counted bank transfers going in, and ignored internal bank transfers going out (e.g. UBS bank to UBS Securities to buy shares) and came up with some number so insane that you didn't even do a sensibility check on it:
"around 21-32 trillion: as much as the US and Japanese economies combined"
You see what I mean? If money equivalent to the US and Japanese economies had flowed into Switzerland, why is its economy a tiny fraction of that size?? Nonsensical.
That money is invested, not sitting in accounts doing nothing. So the money flowed immediately BACK OUT as investments into the US, UK, Japanese, the worlds major economies. Tax Justice completely ignore that transfer, and treats it as money internal to Switzerland generating untaxed magic profits.
Switzerland pays withholding tax. That withholding tax is 3x the rate that Romney pays, (when Romney pays tax at all). Everyone was disappointed with how little the tax was in reality. Well what did they expect? Tax equivalent to the Japan and USA combined???
Except they have to pay for imports with hard currency, so all the petroleum, food, medicines, plastics, metals, cars, TVs, rubber, and everything else they use, they couldn't buy.
So the only deal they can make would be political not financial. e.g. Russia can control Greece, put military bases in Greece, in exchange for lending them money. Some sort of political trade that doesn't make financial sense otherwise. BTW Bosnia is currently going through this, they've elected a Russia proxy leader, he's borrowing like crazy from Russia, gee, I wonder what will happen when they find they're in hock to Russia and can't pay their bills... my guess is military bases on their land, followed by full Soviet style takeover.
While for logical reasons Greece must go bankrupt, there's simply no way out of it, I don't support that notion and I agree that IMF and EU must help. However, evil as always is in details. I disagree strongly with several of so called "reforms" and think that with strong performance in several key ones would be enough.
However, problem of course is that Greece is very slow of implementing exactly those, because those problems runs deep within their society. Country officially going under and they still enjoy not paying taxes? Maybe there's reason why Greece is a birth place of modern anarchy. Maybe they really need a lesson here, real taste of their own medicine. This is very sad, as lot of people suffer of lack of any serious politician (trust me, there's such rare breed), one group of parties are just oligarchy, other part - just plain stupid populists. There's not even serious left center. This is price of populism and nation who aren't aware that's not enough to throw cash around and call themselves a "socialist" to have effective, self-sustained country. I'm leftie leaning center and I'm saddened by that ignorance of living within means. You can support poor, eldery, unemployed in many other ways, actually helping them. You can follow budget and your income and see if there's trouble. If greeks have paid their taxes, they wouldn't be in such trouble.
As for journalist, it simply doesn't register why they made this stupid decision to bring him criminal charges which won't withstand scrutiny for 5 minutes in a court room - only revenge as reason makes sense. For *breaching privacy*? First, what that good old "oy protect richies from public" law do in their criminal codex in first place? I think modern consensus in such cases is civil case.
I think at one point in very relatively soon future Germany will simply require to bring justice upon all tax evaders or there won't be any support.
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
Holding a bank account in Switzerland is hardly evidence of tax evasion. The summary is definitely a troll.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
News at 11pm.
There's $8 billion missing just from Iraq alone, nobody knows how much they skimmed off with TARP or with the rest of it. Seems to me they got pennies from those REPUBLICAN crooks.
that has not managed to build a proper land registry office so far? Just give them a little more time, they have only had time since 1830 to finish it.
source, German language: http://www.cicero.de/weltbuehne/auf-der-suche-nach-dem-katasteramt/52211
Well, as this article proves, that may work in Greece too.
Except the journalist who tried by publishing page one of the Greek edition now finds himself in jail, How is that for irony...
To Terminate, or not to Terminate, that's the question - SCSIROB
Michael Lewis' book called boomerang has a very insightful chapter on this view towards taxes they have along with how they got into this mess. Highly recommended.
Taxes on cars and petrol do not COVER the costs or roads. Not even close. Roads are expensive. The car is NOT a milk cow as many believe, the car is in fact heavily subsidized from general taxes.
Just look at the public figures for the relevant department in your country. X + Y income from fuel and road taxes. Z expenditure. If Z is higher, then cars don't pay for roads, tax payers do. But everyone needs roads so that is okay. Just stop bleating how your fuel tax pays for everything, it doesn't.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
When the Germans got a list of tax-evaders, they prosecuted them. When the Greeks got a list of tax-evaders, they prosecuted the publisher of the list.
The Greeks have since they joined the EU never contributed a single dime, they have ALWAYS been a drain and now they want even more money. They should NEVER have been let into the EU, in fact the EU should have stopped north of France. The Benelux and maybe Germany and the Scandinavian countries, they share a common culture, the protestant work ethic. It is no surprise that the problems are with ALL the southern EU nations and the red headed catholics, the Irish.
There is a gigantic difference in culture you just can't cross with ideals.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
... they offered a good interest rate on savings (I didn't even know until I read this article that HSBC is a Swiss bank... nor did I care).
Guess that makes me a dirty Kulak. I'll report for re-education camp now.
Anyone getting arrested now in greece will stay locked up indefinitely as their judges are on strike. The two poor guys from Bohemia Interactvie are still rotting in jail there.
This is what Wikileaks is for.
Though it isn't the way he meant it, Romney is spot on for warning American's about becoming another Greece.
While the people are suffering austerity measures, the rich are evading taxes.
Romney wants to impose austerity measures here in the USA, give tax cuts to the rich and so far austerity measures have only made the economies in Europe worse.
Yes, use your vote to help the US from becoming another Greece or Europe, vote against Romney and austerity measures.
Just because they have a Swiss account does not mean they are tax evaders. Who can blame them for wanting to keep some of their money in a Swiss account when their own country is so jacked up. And if they do it legally there is absolutely nothing wrong with it. So publishing a list like that is rather slanderous and a total invasion of someones privacy.
The price of gold will rise so long as real interest rates are very low. With such a low reward, there is no sense taking risk by holding dollars.
I am an atheist
Just because you keep repeating that lie, does not mean it will ever become true. What is it that you think you have to gain by claiming to be an atheist, anyways? You could just as well have not made that false statement and your argument would have not been harmed by that omission. Instead you inserted a blatant lie that only makes the rest of what you say look even sillier.
I understand that the main tenet of your philosophy rests upon the necessity to enslave a large number of people, to subjugate their individual freedoms.
It is unclear whether that line came from roman_mir (aka udachny) or was directed at him. While he frequently claims that other people are "subjugating freedom", the obvious truth is that indeed the person who is championing slavery is roman_mir himself.
"In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is stoned to death" --Vinge
Casteism