Greece, Switzerland resume talks on untaxed money
Greece and Switzerland were to hold a new round of talks Thursday on a deal designed to help the cash-strapped Mediterranean country recover billions of euros in unpaid taxes, reports Europe Online.
The visit to Athens by Jacques de Watteville, who heads the international financial and tax affairs unit in the Federal Department of Finance (FDF), is the first since the hard-left government of Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras took office in January on a promise to fight tax evasion and end austerity.
According to tax expert Friedrich Schneider of the Linz University in Austria, Greek nationals hold some 80 billion euros (88 billion dollars) in Swiss bank accounts. Of these, two thirds are illicit, says the economist, who has developed models to estimate tax evasion.
A tax deal would allow Greece to recover between 10 and 15 billion euros, according to Schneider.
An earlier round of talks between the previous Greek government and Swiss officials had ended with a promise by officials in Athens to get back to their counterparts in Bern. But Swiss authorities say they never heard back from their Greek counterparts.
Swiss officials said Thursday‘s talks would focus on allowing tax evaders to report themselves to Greek financial authorities and pay belated taxes without being punished.
For uncooperative tax evaders, Swiss authorities and banks would aid Greek tax investigations or close accounts.
Swiss and Greek financial authorities are also considering setting up an automatic exchange of data.
Tax evasion is endemic in Greece. Earlier this week, a former Greek finance minister, George Papaconstantinou, received a one-year suspended sentence after a special court in Athens found him guilty of misdemeanour for tampering with a tax evader list.
While in office, Papaconstantinou was presented with the names of 2,000 Greeks who had combined deposits at a HSBC bank in Geneva worth six billion euros. The court found him guilty of removing the names of three relatives from the list.
