By all means let us talk about what happened to Greece.

[Skwmom]

The veteran journalist made his name covering the 1991 Gulf War from Baghdad for Greek television. He is now the nation’s best-known investigative journalist, targeting the country’s oligarchs in the magazine he launched last April with $6,700 of his own money.

“We have a small business elite promoting their interests and a political system accommodating them,” he says, picking up the most recent issue.

“Godfathers of the law, promoters of corruption” is the cover headline. The story outlines 20 laws that benefit Greece’s super-rich, such as the one passed in 2011 that gives homeowners with houses larger than 21,000 square feet a 60-per-cent property tax cut. The same year, about $10.2 billion in collectible taxes of all kinds were in arrears — nearly half the country’s budget deficit, according to the International Monetary Fund.

What angers Vaxevanis is the European caricature of Greeks as a lazy people unwilling to pay taxes.

“It is not how it is,” he says. “It is a corrupt political system with corrupt politicians and a climate of fear where journalists cannot report the truth.”

Vaxevanis, who once hosted an investigative television show called Pandora’s Box, rose to global fame in October when he published the so-called Lagarde List, which named 2,059 Greeks, including businessmen and politicians, who have HSBC bank accounts in Switzerland. Vaxevanis estimates the accounts were used to transfer out of Greece at least $3.3 billion between 2004 and 2006, potentially avoiding taxes.

SOUND FAMILIAR?

http://www.thestar.com/news/world/2013/02/02/europes_economic_crisis_how_the_rich_avoid_paying_their_tax_bill.html

[tblue37]

1. KnR for visibility. nt

[Uncle Joe]

2. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, Skwmom.