Greek fury over 2,000 names on 'Swiss bank account' list

The speaker of the Greek Parliament, several employees of the Finance Ministry and a number of business leaders are on a list of more than 2,000 Greeks said to have accounts in a Swiss bank, according to a respected investigative magazine.

The Greek magazine published the list this weekend, raising the stakes in a heated battle over which current and former government officials had seen the list, and whether they had acted on it.

published a list that it said matches the one that Christine Lagarde, then French finance minister and the current head of the International Monetary Fund, had given her Greek counterpart in 2010 to help Greece crack down on rampant tax evasion as it was trying to steady its economy.

The 2,059 people on the list are said to have had accounts in a Geneva branch of HSBC.

Questions about the handling of the list reached a near frenzy in the Greek capital of Athens as several former finance ministers were pressed to explain why the government appeared to have taken no action to investigate those on the list.

The subject has touched a nerve among average Greeks at a time when the Parliament is expected to vote on a new €13.5 billion (HK$135 billion) austerity package, which is likely to further reduce their standards of living.

The list's publication is likely to exacerbate Greeks' anger that their political leaders may have been reluctant to investigate the business elite, with whom they often have close ties, even as middle and lower-class Greeks struggle with higher taxes and increasingly zealous tax collectors.