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- Greece former finance minister George Papaconstantinou
The Greek parliament voted on Friday to investigate former finance minister George Papaconstantinou for allegedly interfering with a tax evasion probe. He is suspected of tampering with a confidential document as more than 2,000 Greeks were avoiding taxes by using their secret accounts in Swiss banks. In December he was accused of masking the names of three of his relatives from a list of wealthy Greeks with more than $2 billion in savings deposited in an HSBC bank in Switzerland. As the country is suffering from the financial crisis for more than 4 years, and more austerity measures are expected to be implemented, the allegations have stoked further public distrust of elites and the political system.
"It is obvious that some people want me to be the scapegoat," said Papaconstantinou, who is accused of deleting the names of three of his relatives from the list, when he addressed the parliament on Thursday. "I did not alter anything. I had no reason to do so. My relatives have provided evidence that the sums concerned are legal and have already been taxed," he said.
"The rest of the world has largely ignored this latest twist of the plot in Greece," Megan Greene, a leading economist at Roubini Global Economics, said.