Kolargol |
01-29-2010 04:51 PM |
Informant offers Germany tax evasion data
An informant has offered German fiscal authorities the data of 1,500 investors who hold bank accounts in Switzerland and have evaded paying taxes in Germany, a daily newspaper reported late Friday.
The informant demands (EURO)2.5 million ($3.49 million) for the data and German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble is currently evaluating whether to agree to the deal, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported. The finance ministry could not immediately be reached for comment.
The case bears striking resemblance to an earlier tax scandal in 2008, when the German Federal Intelligence Service, or BND, paid an informant as much as (EURO)5 million for a list with the names of account holders from a Liechtenstein bank on a CD-ROM.
According to Friday's report, the unknown informant gave tax auditors the data of five of the 1,500 cases to prove the validity of the data and an investigation found that in each of the cases, a back duty of (EURO)1 million ($1.4 million) would be due. The entire data would flush up to (EURO)100 million into the government's treasury, the report said.
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