Post date: Nov 02, 2012 8:14:4 PM
The Greek journalist who published the so-called "Lagarde list" - detailing over 2,000 Greeks with money in Swiss accounts - speaks to Reuters after he was acquitted from charges of violating national privacy laws.
ATHENS, GREECE (NOVEMBER 2, 2012) (REUTERS) - The Greek journalist put on trial for publishing a list of Swiss bank account holders, stuck to his guns on Friday (November 2) and said he would continue to challenge a political and business establishment he says enriches itself at the expense of ordinary people and muzzles the media to hide it.
Costas Vaxevanis was acquitted on Thursday (November 1) of charges of violating personal privacy laws after he published the list of 2,059 names of prominent Greeks including politicians, shipping magnates, doctors, lawyers and housewives.The case riveted a crisis-weary population increasingly angry at consecutive governments' inability to crack down on tax evasion and force the country's wealthy elite to share some of the pain of the country's four-year debt crisis.
In an interview with Reuters Vaxevanis said it was his duty as a journalist to publish the list to stop the spreading rumours and circulating "faked" lists which he said had cast a shadow on every politician in the country.
"We published it because we are journalists. We had this document which two ministers and three successive governments - in a scenario that is like a cartoon - said they had lost (the document), then that it didn't exist, then they said there were different names (on it). Fake lists with fake names of politicians began circulating; at some point, every politician's name was attached to a fake Lagarde list and people were being blackmailed. This created a very unhealthy situation in the country, a sick situation and it needs to stop," Vaxevanis told Reuters from the offices of "Hot Doc", the magazine he founded six months ago in a half-vacant mall in Athens with 5,000 euros ($6,500).
Vaxevanis hailed court's ruling and said the publication of the list was in the public's best interests, noting that his magazine did not publish any personal data of the individuals on the list.
"People needed to know what was going on, and that's what the court said yesterday: the public good is more important than individual data - and we didn't publish personal data, but that's what the prosecutor called it, so we'll call it that, too. Personal data is not as important as the public good, and right now that (the public good) means that injustice must stop - we are on a ledge, Greece is on a ledge - so injustices must cease and justice must be restored. We can't have some people getting rich unlawfully and others looking in the trash for food," the journalist said.
Vaxevanis has said an anonymous source gave him the "Lagarde list" - named afterInternational Monetary Fund director Christine Lagarde who handed it to Athens when she was French Finance Minister in 2010.
Since then three governments have had access to the list but authorities have yet to jail a single big name for tax evasion.
Vaxevanis said his failed prosecution was an effort by members of the political establishment to protect themselves from the same kind of pain that five years of recession has given middle-class Greeks.
"What the Lagarde list showed was that it was their own people they were protecting. Putting names aside, whether it was A or B on the list, the point is that it was their friends on the list, those that they wined and dined with, those that they do business together with every day. That is the Lagarde list and people see that. (Former Finance MinisterEvangelos) Venizelos didn't go to parliament and say, 'Oh, I lost this list of names of insignificant people,' and people see that and feel fooled, like they're going to take the last 100 euros from our pensions but 2000 people - and there are thousands more, it's not just them - are taking money out of the country, possibly illegally, and they haven't paid one euro of tax on it," the journalist, who during his trial attracted much international media spotlight, said.
Vaxevanis accused some local journalists of cooperating with the business elite, and not doing their job.
"Whenever a business opportunity opens in Greece, the same businessmen, through their connections with the system, benefit. Next to them stands a group of journalists, who are connected with both these people and the system, and who ensure that there will be silence. Most of the media in this country is run by businessmen who do other jobs and who are, of course, on the list," Vaxevanis said.
He added he hoped his actions would give courage to the people, bringing about a change to a country which is suffering from the worst recession since World War II.
"We went against the system not because we are hotshots but because we were just doing our job. People aren't looking for heroes, they just want the truth, and that's what we gave them. I don't know what or when things will change, but they will change," the journalist said.
He said he was undaunted by the arrest and that his next issue would again be on the list, analysing the connections of the names it holds.
"We have the next issue ready. We do statistical analysis on the list, we explain why we published it, and we make a note of certain oddities about it that people should know about. Yesterday, the financial crime prosecutor gave the list to parliament and asked about the politicians on the list. And this would not have happened if we hadn't published the list. Somebody would have still been looking for it. Of course we will continue: not only with the list, but with what it is that we do," he concluded.
On Friday, a court official said Greece's financial crimes prosecutor would submit a case to parliament so it could start an investigation into the list.