The former head of the tax service (SDOE) Yiannis Diotis admitted that he had made a copy of the "Lagarde List", which contains the names of Greeks with bank accounts in Switzerland, but denied having changed the contents of the list as stated in the written evidence the defenders of Diotis submitted to the prosecutor's office earlier this week. Mega TV reports that Diotis himself did not appear before the investigation authorities to give verbal explanations due to health problems.
In his written testimony, the former head of the tax service in Greece stated that he had ordered one of his office workers to make a copy of the contents of the USB memory containing the "Lagarde List". He had received the removable memory from former Finance Minister George Papakonstantinou but as Diotis testified, without a description of its content.
Diotis argues in his testimonies, that because he does not have particularly good computer skills and since he did not want to damage the contents of the USB memory, he had told his recently appointed colleague, a lawyer, to make a copy of the list. Then, he examined it and took notes of some of the names and bank accounts. Subsequently, he told the same colleague who had copied the list to delete the data from one of two USB devices in order for it not to fall into the wrong hands until Evangelos Venizelos decided what to do with the legendary list. Yiannis Diotis does not specify whether the deleted list was the original one, which the tax service had received from the former Finance Minister George Papakonstantinou or the copy, which had been made afterwards.
As a result, the prosecutor’s office is unable to find out whether Papakonstatinu had submitted the "Lagarde List" with the names of his cousins already deleted or if it was changed after the former minister gave it.
The head of the tax service initially thought that the list had been obtained illegally, not under the international agreement of cooperation with France. Therefore, when the time came to submit the list to the new Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos, he told him that even if tax offenders were found among the names of owners of fat bank accounts abroad on the list, the prosecutor’s office could not file a lawsuit based on evidence that had been acquired illegally.
Diotis was surprised to find out that the "Lagarde List" had been legally obtained and that the data on it were suitable for carrying out a cross tax check of the people on the list. He blames indirectly Papakonstantinou for the lack of insufficient information, which prevented him from launching an investigation of the source of the funds in the bank accounts on the "Lagarde List".
The new witness in the case - Diotis’ colleague who, according to his testimony, had deleted one of the lists created by his order - is to appear soon before the prosecutor. It is not yet known whether she will confirm the version of her former colleague or if her testimony will present new information about the case. When the prosecutor’s office reaches the bottom of this investigation it will forward the results to the special parliamentary commission, which will have to establish Papakonstantinou’s intervention in changing the "Lagarde List", which was established in late 2012 and directly benefits three of his relatives. George Papakonstantinou will probably be held criminally liable for abuse of office, forgery of a public document and assistance in a tax violation.
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