Greece receives new list of citizens with deposits in Swiss banks

Greece has received a new list of Greek nationals with deposits in Swiss banks and auditors will begin tracing possible tax dodgers from Monday, Greek Deputy Finance Minister Tryfon Alexiades said Wednesday.

According to a Ministry statement, Greek authorities received a list of 10,588 names from the authorities of North Rhine-Westphalia in Germany.

It was not clarified how the German authorities obtained the data, but Athens "welcomed the assistance in efforts to counter tax evasion."

The information reportedly concerns deposits of a total of 3.9 billion Swiss francs (3.81 billion U.S. dollars) in 2006 and 2.9 billion Swiss francs in 2008.

"This list will not languish in a drawer for three years as happened with the Lagarde list," Alexiades told media on the sidelines of a parliament session.

The previous administrations of socialists and conservatives have been strongly criticized of failing to make the most use of data included in the list of 2,062 Greeks with major deposits in Swiss banks. Current International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde was said to have given the list to her Greek counterpart in 2010, while she was serving as France's finance minister.

Greece's leftist government has pledged swift audits and results in relation to tax evasion and corruption. Earlier in November, Alexiades was criticized by opposition parties for the state mechanism's poor performance on the matter.

According to the official data provided by the Ministry on audits and results concerning the Lagarde list depositors, from 2013 until today a total of 481 cases have been investigated and 136 cases have closed.

Alexiades said the Greek state had already gained "hundreds of millions of euros" from probes launched based on information from the Lagarde list, as well as from other similar lists. Endit