The former head of SDOE Giannis Diotis has accused former Minister of Finances Giorgos Papakonstantinou of withholding the information that the infamous “Lagarde List” was officially forwarded by the French authorities.
Mr. Diotis made the accusation public after a number of media reports regarding the French Ministry’s document which accompanied the CD with the Swiss HSBC bank account-holder data in September 2010.
In his letter Mr. Diotis claims that “Mr. Papakonstantinou never reported to me anything about the assistance of the French Ministry of Finances and his then-counterpart Mrs. Christine Lagarde” and adds that “on the contrary, the observed procedure was kept secret, resulting in an official data and document transaction between States turning into an informal data transaction procedure, without any public and official nature”.
The implication of this development, according to Mr. Diotis, is that if Mr. Papakonstantinou had informed him of the official acquisition of the list, he would have investigated the list for tax violations. Instead, the alleged involvement of the Greek secret services and the unofficial status of the list hindered his efforts.
