photo: left.gr
Up until Tuesday morning, the investigation carried out by the electronic crimes office had not found any illegal penetration in the system of the state revenues general secretariat, reported tovima.gr. The investigation was commissioned by a prosecutor to scrutinise the so-called Plan B devised by the former finance minister to facilitate Greece's exit from the euro zone.
In a series of interviews, Yannis Varoufakis presented his plan for 'electronic invasion' of the revenue office general secretariat's database. The goal was to hijack Greek taxpayers numbers for a smoother transition to a parallel currency.
The head of the Athens prosecution office, Ilias Zagoreos, launched a preliminary investigation of the case and ordered the electronic crimes office director, Manolis Sfakianakis, to conduct his own inspection. A task force of the Greek police raided the revenue secretariat offices, but found no traces of the alleged crime.
However, police officials have commented that "at least eight cases have been cracked in recent years where revenue secretariat staff had stolen and sold tax and business data of citizens for an overall amount of around €1 billion." About 20 general secretariat employees were involved, most of them now under court investigation.
Although Varoufakis' Plan B is under departmental audit commissioned by the secretary general of state revenues, Catherina Savaidou, the prosecutor ordered the electronic crime office to conduct a parallel investigation. There are two reasons behind this move: on the one hand, the latter can be done much faster, and on the other, the prosecution will have two expert opinions available, issued by different authorities.
The claims filed against Varoufakis in the Supreme Court have triggered the prosecutor's investigation, and the first witnesses' testimonies are expected by the weekend. The witnesses will likely hail from political circles.