54 billion euros "flew" out of Greece since the beginning of the economic crisis according to the SDOE (Greece’s Financial Crimes Squad) head Stelios Stasinopoulos.
Appearing before Parliament's ethics and institutions committee, to which he was called to give information about the course of investigations related to the Lagarde List, Stasinopoulos revealed that the remittances abroad by some Greeks reached 54 billion euros since 2008. Additionally, 22 billions of this amount concern remittances which are not justified by the corresponding tax return.
The head of SDOE also said that, concerning the Lagarde List case, the checking only on six people revealed ten million euros illegal money.
Concerning the Liechtenstein List, Stasinopoulos said that "it was put in the archive through an inspectors' act since 2011", while there is a checking process by the Greek IRS for the London real estate list. Concerning the list of the 54,000 remittances of taxpayers who, during the critical period 2008-2011, were sending money abroad, Stasinopoulos said that the corresponding list is under inspection by the General Secretariat of Public Revenue, not by SDOE.
In other words, Stasinopoulos essentially admitted that, everyone knows that billions were sent in tax havens, possibly coming from illegal activities in Greece, but the authorities which are responsible to find and persecute the people behind them, have very limited power to do it. The result is the same: the majority of Greeks pay the bill through new austerity measures.
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