GREEK EDITOR ARRESTED FOR EXPOSING TAX EVASION SUSPECTS

October 28, 2012

One would think that journalists were be safe enough in Europe, as long as they did not engage in phone hacking, taking sneaky photos of royal breasts or getting up the nose of the American administration... Well, Greek editor and journalist Costas Vaxevanis can prove that this is not always the case. He was arrested and released pending a trial for publishing the names of 2,059 people on an "official" list of possible tax dodgers.

Mr Vaxevanis claims the list was sent to him anonymously and relates to compilation sent to Greece by France a couple of years ago requesting an investigation into the tax dealings of the suspected evaders. Christine Lagarde, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) was the French finance minister at the time, so the list has been dubbed "The Lagarde List".

Mr Vaxevanis, who published the document in the weekly magazine Hot Doc, justified his actions as being in the public interest:

"I did nothing more than what a journalist is obliged to do. I revealed the truth they were hiding. If anyone is accountable then it is those ministers who hid the list, lost it and then said it didn't exist. I did my job."

He has a point. Particularly in the current climate, where many of Greece's financial problems are said to originate from endemic tax evasion. If he has breached European data protection laws, then surely so have the government officials who lost the document in the first place.