Greece losing 'billions of euros to corruption'

Page last updated at 04:06 GMT, Wednesday, December 14, 2011 - 09:06 EST

AFP:

Disabled people protest in the center of Athens yesterday

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Crisis-hit Greece is still losing billions of euros (dollars) to corruption in spite of efforts to stamp out graft and maximise the state's tax revenue, a report said on Wednesday.

The Ta Nea newspaper said that tax evasion cost Greece 13 billion euros ($17.4 billion) annually in lost revenue, citing remarks by experts and state officials at a conference on corruption on Tuesday.

The finance ministry's former information systems chief Diomidis Spinellis, who resigned in October, told the conference that the state is often able to claim only 20 percent of fines imposed on tax cheats.

Another 40 percent is commonly written off and the remaining 40 percent is pocketed by the tax official in charge of the procedure, Spinellis said.

And when the state is called upon to repay tax, 10 percent of the sum is similarly embezzled by corrupt officials, the head of investigations at Greece's anti-fraud squad (SDOE) Nikos Lekkas told the conference.

Lekkas added that a bank transparency law adopted in 1995 had been applied only last year.

Read the whole story: AFP