THERE has been a new call for Greece to fight the economic situation as one, although we are not too sure how the general public will see the call by the Government. Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos is urging Greeks with overseas bank deposits to bring their money back to Greece.
"I have called for a patriotic campaign for bank deposits to be repatriated. The Greek banking system is totally guaranteed under the agreements we have made," Venizelos told parliament.
Deposit withdrawals in Greece since the crisis started in late 2009 have added pressure on banks, already strained weaker mortgage payments and plans to write-off debt in an international bond-swap deal.
Venizelos defended continued austerity measures, set to extend the recession into a fourth year in 2012. "We are doing what is absolutely necessary, because otherwise we will be excluded from borrowing and the eurozone," he said, standing in for Lucas Papademos for the weekly Prime Minister's questions session. source Athens News
Nikos Lekkas' team of tax investigators knew they were on to something when they found that a humble farmer on the island of Thasos owned a red Ferrari and a Porsche.
Intrigued by how a farmer who had declared just 100,000 euros in income over the past decade could afford such luxuries, Lekkas dispatched an undercover tax agent to the northern Aegean island.
The agent was back soon, not only was the Thasos "farmer" earning far more than he had disclosed to the state, he was in an entirely different line of business: loan sharking.
Greece is now close to a deal to seize 10m euros from the man, says Lekkas, the no. 2 official in the newly relaunched Financial and Economic Crime unit (SDOE). He proudly points to the case as one of many signs that the country is finally serious about hunting down tax cheats and making them pay up.
"Earlier there was no political will by governments to get to the bottom of this", Lekkas, a tax veteran at 59, said in his office near Piraeus. "Now that we've reached the edge of the cliff, they've decided to implement measures against tax evasion."
The government looks set to exceed its revenue targets from the unpopular property tax, an official at the Public Power Corporation (DEI) which is collecting the tax said on Thursday
A total of 650m euros of the tax have been collected so far, suggesting the final take may breach the government's initial goals, said the official who declined to be named "This [figure] means that the government will meet its 1.7bn euro revenue target for this year, probably hitting 2bn," he said.
DEI is collecting the tax through electricity bills under the threat of cutting consumers' power if they fail to comply. But despite the protests, only about a fifth of households are in arrears – the usual rate for all DEI bills, the official said.
The government imposed the tax in September in a desperate move to meet its budget deficit targets under the EU/IMF bailout.
