By Gerasimos Livitsanos

After three delays, deputy Finance Minister Giorgos Mavraganis finally appeared in parliament to take questions about the taxation of offshore companies and to confirm with facts what was expected: That, practically, no offshores get taxed and when they do get audited, and subsequently fined,  they don’t pay!

The question regarding the taxation of offshore companies had already been submitted three times by Dimar lawmaker Nikos Tsoukalis and, according to reports, the deputy Finance Minister had called the MP asking for a fourth delay.

As Mavraganis admitted, the finance ministry has only audited 3.7% of Greek offshore companies. More specifically, just 251 companies out of a total of 6,775 have been audited, and fines imposed amount to €99.4 million!

His admission follows a statement he made to parliament in 2013 when he said that 218 firms were being probed and that the results of the inspections would be presented in Parliament as soon as they were available. 
 
Critics say that if the audits continue at the same pace, then it will take at least a decade before they are completed. Remarkably, only a fraction of the fines imposed has been collected.

“It is clear that the audit of offshores could quickly provide an inflow of hundreds of millions of euros. All it takes is to calculate the average number of companies that have been audited and the fines that have been imposed  to see that at least €2.5-3 billion could be collected,”  Tsoukalis said (link in Greek). 

It should be noted that the audits do not include checks of  the assets of natural persons linked to the offshore companies. Especially, of those people that have bought properties from these offshores – a move which makes them inconspicuous partners.

For his part, Mavraganis said he was pleased with the ministry’s performance and claimed that the “cases have been recorded and auditing services have been staffed with specialised people and the tax legislation has been shielded”.

He went to state that ‘we will be in position within the EU to contribute to the effort to confront this phenomenon”.