Greek parliament approves ex-minister's prosecution

Greece's parliament early on Tuesday approved the filing of criminal charges against a former finance minister who is alleged to have tampered with a confidential tax list during his term in office. A majority of nearly nine-tenths from all parties present demanded George Papaconstantinou be charged with breach of trust, document falsification and breach of duty. Party representatives in a committee that has been investigating the issue since January had already called for Papaconstantinou's prosecution earlier this month. Under Greek law, ministers have immunity from prosecution unless parliament votes to revoke it and approves the filing of criminal charges. The 52-year-old former minister protested his innocence and said he was being made a "scapegoat" for an unpopular administration that introduced austerity measures in return for international loans to avoid default. "I deny these charges absolutely and categorically," he said in a final post-midnight plea to his former colleagues after a long final debate on the case. "It is not my fault that this data was not followed up after I left the ministry. I am the one that ordered an investigation in the first place," he said. A five-member judicial council will now be set up later this week to decide whether Papaconstantinou will face a special court. He faces a maximum 10-year prison sentence if convicted on all charges. The former Socialist minister is suspected of tampering with a document containing the names of some 2,000 Greek citizens with accounts at HSBC bank in Switzerland in order to hinder a probe into tax evasion. Papaconstantinou, who has retired from politics, is accused of deleting the names of three of his relatives from the list. A senior prosecutor on Monday also ordered that two former heads of Greece's financial crimes squad should also be charged for failing to investigate the case. Originally leaked by an HSBC employee, the list was sent to Papaconstantinou in 2010 by current IMF head Christine Lagarde who was France's finance minister at the time. Local media have dubbed the scandal the "Lagarde list" affair. Papaconstantinou helped set up the heavily indebted country's first austerity programme and European Union-IMF bailout deal in 2010. He now risks becoming the first minister in over two decades to face prison. In 1992, a major bank embezzlement scandal known as the Koskotas Affair saw then prime minister Andreas Papandreou and a handful of senior officials go on trial for failing to avert the collapse of the Bank of Crete, a suspected backer of the ruling socialist party. Papandreou was acquitted and though some of the other defendants were initially convicted, none went behind bars.