Confiscation of undeclared assets under way
Financial prosecutors are confiscating assets owned by depositors checked for tax evasion who were found to have high deposits in overseas accounts while declaring low incomes in Greece. The prosecutors’ work has been aided by a number of lists of such depositors which have been submitted to Greece.
There are 24 depositors on the list submitted to Athens by the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia and on a list of probed portfolios who are already having assets confiscated, including properties, securities and bank accounts.
The confiscations to date have been carried out by a group of prosecutors who run the monitoring process for the identification of undeclared or illegal incomes on the various lists. When the difference between a depositor’s assets and their declared income is notable they immediately become tax evasion suspects, and unless they can explain their revenues they will be subject to confiscations.
The prosecutors send some 100 explanation requests daily to depositors on the German list or that with portfolios, which includes investors who purchased bonds in other countries (the US and Germany) and deposited them in credit institutions abroad.
The German list includes as many as 10,500 names, and the asset confiscations are expected to fetch about 80 to 100 million euros while putting pressure on those who still have undeclared incomes to comply with legislation.
The financial prosecutors also said they are monitoring six more lists they have in their hands with Greek deposits either abroad or with Greek lenders, while the total number of taxpayers involved has been put at 1.38 million.
