Yahoo – AFP,
7 March 2015
Athens (AFP) - Ex-Greek finance minister Gikas Hardouvelis is being investigated for alleged failure to comply with his tax obligations, a Greek newspaper reported Saturday.
Greece's ex-finance minister Gikas Hardouvelis at the European Council in Brussels, on January 26, 2015 (AFP Photo/Emmanuel Dunand) |
Athens (AFP) - Ex-Greek finance minister Gikas Hardouvelis is being investigated for alleged failure to comply with his tax obligations, a Greek newspaper reported Saturday.
According
to the weekly Real News, the deposits in Hardouvelis' bank accounts in 2011 did
not match the incomes he had declared that year. Also, in 2012 he was suspected
of sending money to banks abroad that was not accounted in his declaration of
assets.
The inquiry
was launched by anti-corruption minister and outgoing head of the independent
money laundering authority, Panagiotis Nikoloudis,on January 20.
Nikoloudis
confirmed to AFP on Saturday that he had opened a probe, emphasising that he
had done so before becoming a minister in the new Syriza government.
"Hardouvelis
has sent money abroad in a really curious way", he said.
Hardouvelis
was briefly finance minister in the government of conservative prime minister
Antonis Samaras, which was brought down this January by the populist Syriza
party, campaigning to roll back painful austerity reforms imposed by Greece's
EU creditors.
According
to the Real News report, which was due to be published Sunday, Nikoloudis had
sent an urgent classified demand to the Greek parliament, just five days before
the general election, for an audit of Hardouvelis' tax declaration.
Hardouvelis
issued a statement on Saturday, insisting that he had paid all taxes and that
any foreign bank accounts he has were opened only because he had also worked
abroad. Funds were only sent to those accounts when he was not a minister.
"I'm
taxed for the sums of money the newspaper is referring to. The money is the
result of many years of work -- mine and my wife's. My tax reports confirm
that", said Hardouvelis.
Syriza
issued a statement Saturday attacking Hardouvelis' alleged behaviour at the
height of the Greek debt crisis.
"While
Mr Hardouvelis was sending e-mails to the troika of creditors agreeing with new
measures that would have burdened people even more, he was not revealing his
income and he was sending his money abroad," Syriza said.
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