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By Anthee Carassava 10:30PM GMT 13 Jan 2013
Greek lawmakers will vote on whether two former prime ministers and a pair of ex-finance ministers should face criminal prosecution for turning a blind eye to potential tax cheats.
George Papaconstantinou has hinted that his political foes are trying to incriminate him Photo: EPA
The parliamentary vote, scheduled for January 17, spawns from allegations of fraud and breach of duty levelled against George Papaconstantinou, a socialist politician, while at the helm of the country's finance ministry three years ago.
Last month, after a lengthy investigation, judicial prosecutors suggested that the former finance minister may have had a hand in the country's biggest tax evasion scandal in decades after the names of three of his relatives were deleted from a list of wealthy Greeks with more than $2bn in savings stashed away in an HSBC bank branch in Geneva.
The account holders include Eleni Papaconstantinou, a high-flying Harvard educated corporate lawyer, and her husband whose joint account hold $1.2m, as well as Ms Papaconstantinou's sister's spouse, an arms dealer.
Last week the parties appeared before an investigating magistrate, denying all allegations of tax evasion and providing written proof that their Swiss savings accounts were both declared and taxed, as required by Greek law.
Should that the declarations be proved true, Mr Papaconstantinou could be cleared of criminal prosecution and probable incarceration, slapped instead with misdemeanour charges for tampering with state documents to omit the names of relatives names from the so-called "Lagarde List."
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A suave, socialist-minded economist who ceded his international career to join forces in what he called 'the rebirth" of his country, Mr Papaconstantinou admits to having received a compact disc of the contentious list from Christine Lagarde, the now head of the International Monetary Fund, when she was French finance minister and he was serving in the socialist government of prime minister George Papandreou in 2010.
Two administrations that followed, including a brief 11-month government led by technocrat Lucas Papademos, last year, failed to expose billionaire tax cheats. No one on the Lagarde list has been charged, let alone probed.
Worst yet, when questioned by a first congressional subcommittee last year, Mr. Papaconstantinou maintained that the contentious CD had gone missing after he personally proffered a copy to the country's financial police (SDOE).
On Monday those former heads will face additional questioning after computer experts added another twist to the deepening scandal, suggesting last week that data contained in the memory stick which Papaconstantinou passed on to SDOE was "modified" long after the former minister left office in July 2011.
Papaconstantinou's successor at the finance ministry was Evangelos Venizelos, a pugnacious and mercurious lawmaker who has gone on to the helm of the socialist PASOK party and latched on to the government as a partner to the conservative-led coalition government that was stitched together last year, after two divisive elections in May and June.
"Not surprisingly," conceded a senior government official Friday, "it's his potential prosecution that we are most concerned about, not Papaconstantinou's.
"If he [Mr. Venizelos] goes, then that spells trouble for all of us."
Indeed, for the three-party ruling coalition, the unending almost daily flow of disclosures has spread a darkened stain over the government's bid to crackdown on widespread tax evasion.
Recent opinion polls showed 68pc of Greeks saying the government was not doing enough to bust tax cheats, preferring instead added spending cuts and tax hikes to make up for state losses.