Galery

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Six doctors, an astrologer, a hairdresser, a supermarket and a travel agency walked straight into the trap of the service prosecuting the financial crimes as they had over € 70 million their bank accounts. Now, they will have to explain the origin of those large amounts, as their tax returns do not give proof of such income. Some of them even stated that they have no income.

The control bodies checked two thousand bank accounts of people with large deposits and their findings are truly impressive. The first in the list are six doctors who declared in the last four years revenues of € 6.2 million, but another 11,000,000 were found in their bank accounts.

Very indicative is the case of an astrologer, who had over € 4 million in banks but he has never declared even minimum income in the tax returns. The difference between the revenues and "savings" of a hairdresser is around € 1.5 million. Technical business owners are unable to explain the presence of deposits amounting € 16 million. € 35 million is the gap between the declared income and the money in the bank accounts of the owner of a supermarket.

Nevertheless, the findings do not stop here.  A travel agency located on an island in the Ionian Sea rented luxury villas against € 15 – 30,000 per week without considering it necessary to declare this income to the tax authorities. It used the following scheme for tax evasion: the agency opened a branch in London and presented the revenue as revenue from abroad, and then forwarded the money to a Greek bank. Having tracked the movement of the money and having opened the bank accounts the tax commandos found undeclared revenues amounting to € 3,000,000.

The service prosecuting the financial crimes drew a bead on the research and development programs of Greek universities, after it had found serious cases of tax evasion in the Ionia Alma Mater.

When inspecting a special research program at the University of Epirus, the financial officers found that 60 teachers and another 240 members of the associated research staff have hid extra fees totaling € 1.8 million. They received the money for their participation in research programs in the period 2009-2010.

After the inspections, the tax commandos prepare reports for each of the cases of discrepancy between income and bank deposits and send them to the tax offices. Two of the captured doctors have already agreed with the tax authorities to pay the due taxes in order to avoid police persecution, which took effect earlier this month for those who owe the state amounts over € 5,000.

According to the management of the service prosecuting financial crimes, such cases are only the tip of the iceberg and they are very indicative of the huge amount of hidden money and of the tax evasion that have continued for years. Recently, the financial controllers have been given the opportunity to look into the bank accounts of Greeks holding 'fat' bank accounts because there is a fast-track procedure for cancelling the banking secrecy. A major Greek bank is expected to establish a special department and soon it will be able to connection the control authorities directly with the accounts that they consider necessary to be open because of doubts that the money in them are the product of tax evasion.