Unraveling of Swiss accounts list turns up the heat in Greece

ATHENS — The speaker of the Greek Parliament, several employees of the Finance Ministry and a number of business leaders are on a list of more than 2,000 Greeks said to have accounts in a Swiss bank, according to a respected investigative magazine. The Greek magazine, Hot Doc, published the list, raising the stakes in a heated battle over which current and former government officials had seen the list — and whether they hawd acted on it.

Hot Doc published a list Saturday that it said matches the one that Christine Lagarde, then French finance minister and the current head of the International Monetary Fund, had given her Greek counterpart in 2010 to help Greece crack down on rampant tax evasion as it was trying to steady its economy. The 2,059 people on the list are said to have had accounts in a Geneva branch of HSBC.

Questions about the handling of the list reached a near frenzy in Athens as several former finance ministers were pressed to explain why the government appeared to have taken no action to investigate those on the list. The subject has touched a nerve among average Greeks at a time when the Parliament is expected to vote on a new ¤13.5 billion austerity package, which is likely to further reduce their standards of living.

The publication of the list is likely to exacerbate Greeks’ anger that their political leaders might have been reluctant to investigate the business elite, with whom they often have close ties, even as mid- dle- and lower-class Greeks have struggled with higher taxes and increasingly ardent tax collectors. The magazine was careful to note that having an account at HSBC was not illegal or proof of evading Greek taxes, a point underscored by a spokesman for the Greek Finance Ministry. But the magazine suggested that Greek officials should use the list to check if those on it had moved money into the accounts to escape paying taxes.

Hours after the magazine hit newsstands, Athens prosecutors issued a warrant for the arrest of Kostas Vaxevanis, the owner and editor of Hot Doc, “where names from the Lagarde list have been published,” the Athens police said in a statement on their website. They said he was sought on misdemeanor charges; the Greek media reported that the charges were related to violating the privacy of those on the list.

Vaxevanis, one of Greece’s most famous investigative journalists, said he was being wrongly targeted. “Instead of arresting the tax evaders and the ministers who had the list in their hands, they are trying to arrest the truth and free journalism,” he said in a telephone interview that was uploaded on the Internet and widely circulated.

The issue of the list has shaken the country for weeks, posing new challenges to the fragile three-way coalition government of Prime Minister Antonis Samaras. Above all, it put intense pressure on the Socialist party, a key member of the coalition, whose leader, Evangelos Venizelos, is one of two Socialist former finance min- isters accused of not having acted on the information.

There was no immediate comment from Samaras, who was meeting with aides throughout the afternoon to discuss the new austerity measures being demanded by Greece’s lenders.

Giorgos Voulgarakis, the speaker of the Parliament from Samaras’ center-right New Democracy party, denied having any overseas bank accounts and accused the magazine of mudslinging.

Hot Doc said it had been given the list by “one of the people who had received” it. Yannis Stournaras, the finance minister, sent a letter to his French counterpart several days ago asking for the original list, but so far the Greek official has not received a response, according to the ministry spokesman, who was not authorized to speak publicly. The aide said that the Greek Finance Ministry wants to be certain that it has the original list of names before investigating whether any tax evasion occurred. The magazine said it had called a sampling of account holders on its list to confirm that they had deposits in the Swiss bank. Citing privacy concerns for those on the list, Hot Doc said it had redacted how much money was said to be in each account, but added that some accounts had as much as ¤500 million. The list dates to 2007.

The magazine also carried a long report on Voulgarakis. According to Hot Doc, Voulgarakis opened an account at HSBC in 2003 that was jointly managed by him, his wife and an offshore company based in Liberia.