Galery

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Three or four months ago, Economic Police prosecutors convened an emergency meeting with the heads of major tax offices in Athens. The purpose of the meeting was to investigate the names in the Lagarde list. Previously, that had been within the power of the Office for Combating Economic Crimes only little was achieved due to huge workloads and insufficient staff. The investigation was headed by Panayiotis Athanasiou and Galinos Bris, while Yannis Dragatsis was assigned the day-to-day supervision of inspections.

Dragatsis has experience in investigating economic crimes (the Lavrentiadis case). He also has a university background in Finance – he completed his MA studies recently, and according to comments, he is not afraid to investigate cases in which major businessmen are involved, even if they are very well connected.

Next week, the investigation of at least ten account holders in the Lagarde list will finish, namely tax evaders whose fines are expected to exceed 20 million euros. According to protothema.gr, they are well-known public persons in Athens.

One of the names is that of Konstantinos N who is known as the ‘golden dentist of Glyfada’. He owns a company jointly with his wife, a dental technician. Surprisingly, although their account balance is zero in the Lagarde list, investigations reveal a ‘secret’ revenue amounting to 13.5 million euros. Konstantinos also owns luxury cars, one of them a Porsche.

In addition to the Lagarde list, economic prosecutors gain information about the investigation abroad from the Centre for control on high-income tax-payers. Inspections revealed 80 persons who had deposited nearly 40 million euros in foreign banks.

Fines and total tax charges will amount to 80 million euros.

At the same time, checks conducted by the Office for Combating Economic Crimes on the most affluent doctors and lawyers are ongoing. After taking inventory of their immovable property, the incomes they declared over the past 10 years, and their bank accounts, those who were proved to have evaded taxes were summoned to give explanations.

Some of the lawyers are well-known university lecturers, as well as professionals who have been engaged with major court cases in recent years.

Subject of the investigation are also lawyers who find customers at the last moment, mainly in civil courts.

Famous law firms in Athens and the region were inspected as well, their findings and the relevant data collected being really striking. According to available information, 400 lawyers have been found guilty of evading taxes so far, the sums ranging from 500,000 to 10 million euros for each of them. Those persons have already been fined or will be dealt fines amounting to more than 200 million euros. In recent years, most of the lawyers who are subject to the investigation, have bought luxury properties in Athens or on the islands of Mykonos, Paros, and Tzia.

Many of the tax evaders are lawyers in criminal law. Two of them are famous lecturers at the University of Athens and have taken part in major criminal proceedings. One is a lawyer who received 1.5 million euros in the period between 2010 and 2012 and failed to this sum them in addition to being unable to provide any documentary evidence. A prominent lawyer declared to have received between 20,000 and 30,000 euros per year, yet 4.2 million euros were discovered in his bank accounts.

In addition to tax evasion, the lawyers might also be charged with money laundering. More than 1,000 lawyers from Greece are in the cross hairs.