The stories are out there but "The News" keep them hidden

During the last six months, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) has released two extremely important stories which prove that the economic and political elite of Europe manage to avoid paying taxes via laws that are passed for this very reason or simply for the purpose of serving the interests of the banks.

The first story was about the so-called “LuxLeaks.” The state of Luxembourg, whose former Prime Minister and Finance Minister, Jean-Claude Juncker, is currently president of the EU Commission, had formed a framework which provided the opportunity to large firms around the world to avoid paying taxes.

The second story came as a result of the release of the so-called “Lagarde List” by Greek magazine Hot Doc, where the names and professions of HSBC bank account holders in Switzerland were revealed. Those individuals have used the “shadow banking” system of this specific bank in order to transfer amounts of money which likely originated from illegal activity or which have not been taxed.

In both cases, the ICIJ chose the newspaper Ta Nea [The News] as the Greek medium to publish these stories. In both cases, Ta Nea only proceeded with the partial publication of the available data and did not publish some cases related to Greece. For instance, the EFG Group and the man behind it, Spiros Latsis, were not mentioned despite their involvement in the LuxLeaks scandal. The same was true with the cases of other Greek businessmen who had also played this tax-avoidance game. The newspaper, however, chose to publish all the details about another Greek businessman, Dimitris Daskalopoulos. Other Greek media outlets adopted the same practice of partial publication. What do these media outlets have in common? All of them feature advertisements from the groups whose names were not mentioned.

Ta Nea did not even publicize anything about the case of former general secretary of public income, Katerina Savaidou. Although her mission was to combat tax evasion, she was previously a white-collar employee of PricewaterhouseCoopers, the company that had helped the Latsis Group to avoid taxes via the Luxembourg laws.

The newspaper continues this unacceptable practice with the new SwissLeaks stories. They have not published the names of 86 Greek HSBC depositors who live abroad. It is the same newspaper which, in 2012, had downplayed Hot Doc‘s release of the first SwissLeaks, which were contained within the Lagarde list. The release of that information resulted in the arrest of Hot Doc‘s editor, Kostas Vaxevanis, on charges of publishing personal data. Vaxevanis was twice found not guilty by Greek courts, and this constitutes a legal precedent that should encourage Ta Nea to publish all the names they have in their computers. On the contrary, they have chosen to remain silent and to conceal the cases. They criticize the scandal on an ethical basis, but remain silent with regards to the prominent individuals who are connected to corruption in Greece.

It is not the first time that the ICIJ has chosen the wrong medium to publish its stories. Some years ago, they chose Kathimerini as the medium to publish the WikiLeaks revelations. Those revelations were never published in Greece, with one of them regarding the head of Kathimerini himself, Alexis Papahelas. It was revealed then that the content of Papahelas’ television program was controlled by specific foreign embassies prior to being broadcast. 

By the Hot Doc direction