A national sport no more

GREEK officials used to shrug off tax evasion as “a national sport”. The finance ministry focused on raising revenue through indirect taxes such as value-added tax. Meanwhile income from a flourishing black economy financed the building of second homes on the islands, in Greece’s Arcadian heartland or moved into bank accounts abroad.

Those days are over. As Greece struggles to put its public finances in order, property owners have been hit by a volley of new taxes and holders of Swiss bank accounts are under uncomfortable scrutiny. Hot Doc, an investigative magazine, recently published a list of 2,000 Greeks who kept accounts at a Geneva branch of HSBC.