The Lagarde List

[Dr. FIVE]

Big respect for the journalists pushing this in the most precarious of times.
I take Greece is similar to elsewhere in what remains of the press is owned by tax exiles?

[Dr. FIVE]

former head of the Financial Crimes Unit says

“I never received any orders from Mr Papaconstantinou for further investigation. And I never received an official document from the Finance Ministry ordering my agency to carry out a detailed investigation into those 10 cases,”

Who said Ireland is not Greece

[Ephilant]

Looks like the judiciary is making a fist here. After the time bomb landed in Samaras lap yesterday by the Court of Auditors, he has now also been dealt a blow by the Court in Athens who cleared Kostas Vaxevanis of any wrong doing in relation the the publication of the "Lagarde List".
Not only did the court clear the journalist, it actually sided with him in the sense that the judge called the whole thing a pressing social and political issue needing urgent attention from parliament.
Which promptly happened when the PArliament received a recommendation from the financial prosecutors to look into criminal charges against former Finance Ministers Giorgos Papaconstantinou and God Venizelos.

God Venizelos has more than enough on his plate and could really have done without this. Even the possibility of a criminal charge against him would certainly trigger a heave against him within PASOK, and that is expected to happen this week-end. This would, in turn, most likely leave Samaras without the necessary majority vote to pass the planned auterity measures next Wednesday.
Watch this space!

[Dr. FIVE]

acquitted

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-20172516

[DCon]

Front page of the WSJ Europe

[Dr. FIVE]

story here

http://www.pressdisplay.com/pressdisplay/viewer.aspx

[Ephilant]

Not one to be upstaged by anybody, definitely not a Frenchi, we now also have the "Cameron" list.
The British government has been handed a list containing 8474 names of account holders with HSBC-Jersey, which was handed to the British authorities last week by a whitle blower. The list contains 134 Cypriots, 602 Israelis, 572 French nationals, 333 Spaniards, 117 Americans and 4388 British.
the list also contains the names of 97 Greek nationals, with a combined deposit of 22.3 BILLION Euro.
The nationalites of the others have not been revealed so far but are suspected to be mainly Russian and Italian.

The Greek authorities have been invited to put in an official request for the list...

[Captain Con O'Sullivan]

I think these lists are coming from the same place. Lagarde's story is that the list she gave the Greeks came from French officials but this does seem to be a list which the German state bought and then passed on to the French as I suspected.

HSCB, Barclays, all the main players are up to their bollocks in tax evasion for their clients. Didn't Beverley Hoopla-Flynn work for an Irish bank specialising in Isle of Man accounts?

International banking is rotten with tax haven evasion by the wealthy. And all the big banks know it, participate and facilitate it and indeed chase that very business. Thats why they have branches IN tax havens.

[Ephilant]

Back peddling already. Now they are suddenly not sure if this is a "genuine" list, at least the Greek/Cypriot part of it. And anyway, the amount of money involved is "negliable" It has been down graded from 22 billion to 22 million. Somebody mis-spoke...

[Captain Con O'Sullivan]

The lying has started then- there wouldn't have been much point in the Germans passing this ifno to the French Finance Ministry for onward transmission to the Greek Finance Ministry via Lagarde if it was a bag of peanuts of £22million.

Someone is bullshytting on the Greek side.

[Ephilant]

The lying has started then- there wouldn't have been much point in the Germans passing this ifno to the French Finance Ministry for onward transmission to the Greek Finance Ministry via Lagarde if it was a bag of peanuts of £22million.

Someone is bullshytting on the Greek side.

Could be any one of the many.
Little side note, local teacher has not been paid for nearly 2 years, no funding. Local MP wonders what the fuss is all about, he gets his payments regular as clockwork, including expenses etc. Can't understand what the problem is all about, somebody must be lying to Europe. Including his boss Samaras who keeps telling the world Greece has no money left for wages, pensions, etc. Bet you his wage wasn't a day late, ever....

[Ephilant]

Surprise Surprise...

Kostax Vaxevanis, the journalist who had the nerve to publish the Greek names on the Lagarde List was exonorated by the Courts in Greece about 2 weeks ago. Today, the Public Prosecutor has launched and appeal against the decision and has filed the necessary papers this morning. It is blatantly obvious that somebody is trying to muzzle the press, and is using every trick in the book to do so.
Given the experience with Sokratis Giolias, Kostas would be a wise man to be very careful. Whoever feels threatened by this is not going to stop at this.

[Ephilant]

Well then...

Today, 2 of Greece's largest newspaper both claim, independtly of each other, that

An official with the Greek financial crimes squad SDOE has reportedly said that Margaret Papandreou, mother of former Prime Minister George Papandreou, is involved with a deposit of 550 million euros ($714.28 million) in the Geneva, Switzerland branch of HSBC, the biggest on a list of 2,059 Greeks with accounts there who haven’t been checked for tax evasion.

Both Mother and son are of course hotly disputing this, and have threatened lega action.

To Vima said that current SDOE chief Stelios Stassinopoulos, a friend of Prime Minister Antonis Samaras, is aware of the story and that a director of a peripheral administration, Evangelos Karamanos, said Margaret Papandreou’s name was raised in a meeting of five SDOE officials, but that it was not revealed to a Parliamentary committee investigating the list.

Full story here and here


Update: PASOK has demanded the sacking of the official who broke the news...

[Ephilant]

Although things have gone very quiet around Kostas Vaxevanis, his words ring louder than ever tonight. Kostas stated that the famous Lagarde list had been, and still was being used as political ammunition between politicians while it never was properly investigated by the state prosecutors.

Tonight the news broke that the largest deposits mentioned in the list have been attributed to Margaret Papandreou, the 2nd wife of the late Andreas Papandreou and mother of our previous PM George Papandreou, who famously proposed a referendum on the austerity measures and promptly got himself removed from power by the EU.

There are of course the compulsary denials and insults being traded over this. Fact remains that what is being revealed, or rather drip-fed, confirms what Kostas alleged. The list is being used as a means to politically execute opponents and manipulate others, while nobody really does what needs doing, ie investigate properly and charge those who are costing the People of Greece and estimated 70 billion € in unpaid taxes.

According to the papers that lobbed this nuclear hand granade in the Greek political world,

Nikolaos Lekkas, the Manager-Comptroller of SDOE, said that, “Behind the biggest deposit on the list is Mrs. Margarita Papandreou.”

Officially, the money was deposited by a civil servant called Maria Panteli, who has NOT been interviewed on any of this. She officially works for a very wealthy business man named as Sabi Mioni, currently living in Tel Aviv. There is a serious link between Sabi Mioni and our current PM Antonis Samaras, in that they both use the same legal advisor, who is also a personal friend of both. Add to this that the current head of the SDOE, Stelios Stassinopoulos is also a personal friend of the PM, who is, according the a director within this administration, Evangelos Karamanos, not only aware of the link to Margaret Papandreou, but has also not disclosed it to the parliamentary committee investigating the Lagarde List.
It is not clear who the target of this revelation is, but PASOK seems to be very uneasy with the whole thing, and has demanded the immediate replacement of all those with ND links involved in the whole thing. could this be pay-back time for the cull Andreas Papandreou inflicted on the predecessors of the ND when he got the overall majority vote so many years back and "removed" a good few of the "ruling" families from their privileged positions?
And could it be that the Margaret Panadreou (nee Chant) links with JP Morgan, reputed to have loaned 1 billion $ to George Papandreou to set up PASOK, could actually come back to haunt them as a good few people are now looking at the whole Bank of Crete affair again?

Watch this space, there is a proper Greek drama unfolding, complete with Gods, demi-Gods, wars and intrigue. And it involves the high and mighty of Greek and EU (!) political and business world of the last 30 years or so. Why do I get images of a snake eating itself and not realizing what it is doing?

[DCon]

Oh boy

zerohedge ‏@zerohedge

Former Greek PM G-Pap's 89 Year Old Mother Said To Have $700 Million In Swiss Bank Account

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-1...s-bank-account