Greece Outside In: Greek court acquits editor who leaked 'Lagarde list' of suspected tax evaders

Wednesday, November 27, 2013

Greek court acquits editor who leaked 'Lagarde list' of suspected tax evaders

Retrial finds Kostas Vaxevanis did not infringe privacy laws by publishing list of 2,000 rich Greeks with Swiss bank accounts

The journalist who caused uproar in Greece by revealing the names of thousands of suspected tax evaders has emerged triumphant from his clash with the country's justice system after a court acquitted him of breaking privacy laws.

After sitting for more than five hours, the three-member tribunal unanimously declared today that Kostas Vaxevanis had not infringed privacy laws by publishing the personal data of those named on the so-called Lagarde list.

"It is a great day for press freedom," said the 47-year-old editor, who published the list in his bimonthly investigative magazine Hot Doc 13 months ago.

"With this unanimous decision, we have emerged totally victorious today," he told the Guardian. "Our opponents are all those who wanted to cover up the system of corruption and vested interests that governs this country."

More than 2,000 wealthy Greeks who held secret bank accounts in the Geneva branch of HSBC were named on the list. Many belonged to the country's elite, with politicians, businessmen, oligarchs and shipping families among those revealed.

Christine Lagarde, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) chief after whom the infamous file is named, handed the list to her then Greek counterpart, the finance minister Giorgos Papaconstantinou, in the hope that the authorities in Athens would carry out an audit of those on it.

A supreme court prosecutor proposed last week that Papaconstantinou, the architect of debt-stricken Greece's first EU-IMF sponsored bailout, be tried for dereliction of duty in his handling of the list. The former minister, who was expelled by his own centre-left Pasok party, has been accused of tampering with the list to remove the names of three of his relatives.

"What we did was in the public interest," Vaxevanis insisted outside the courtroom. "Greece, to this day, remains the only European state not to have made even one euro in reclaimed tax by pursuing those whose names were on the Lagarde list. Other countries, such as Portugal and Germany, made millions."

Vaxevanis had originally been acquitted last year but in an unprecedented step a public prosecutor overturned the verdict, claiming that it had been made in haste, and he was retried for the same crime. The case had been a bizarre footnote to the crisis that has enveloped the country since its descent into bankruptcy four years ago.