The Financial Times revealed on Tuesday that on July 4 authorities raided the home of Christos Sclavounis, former UBS head of investment banking in Greece, removing computers, documents and disks.


“This is one more case where Greek authorities acted methodically and efficiently to hand out justice” government spokeswoman Olga Gerovassili said in a statement.

Mr Sclavounis was UBS’s head of investment banking in Greece until his appointment by a right conservative government in May 2013 as chair of the Hellenic Financial Stability Fund, a rescue fund for the country’s troubled banks. He resigned in March 2015, only two months after Alexis Tsipras’ leftwing Syriza party was elected. Mr Sclavounis, who has not been charged, declined to comment.
 
After previous Greek governments were lambasted for their failure to pursue suspected tax evasion revealed in a leak from HSBC’s Swiss bank, the authorities step up a probe into UBS’s activities in the country. Tsipras’ government has pledged to crack down on endemic tax evasion in Greece.
 
The Greek investigation is based on information Germany shared with Athens. It includes account information from UBS’s Geneva Branch contained on a CD that German authorities bought back in 2012. By cross-checking account numbers and dates of birth on that list with domestic records of transfers abroad, Greek investigators compiled a list of 1.000 suspected major tax evaders, some of whom have already agreed settlements, sources said.

“The country and its citizens cannot perpetually be held hostage by corruption” Gerovassili said.

UBS, the biggest Swiss bank by assets, said: “We have not been contacted by Greek authorities concerning an alleged investigation of UBS”. The bank declined to comment further.
 
In December, financial prosecutors had also raided the investment bank's headquarters in Athens.