What did Greece do with all the money?

[Red Light]

They stashed it all away in Swiss bank accounts. In fact if all the Greek money in Swiss bank accounts was used to pay of the Greek national debt there would be virtually no debt left.

 

[Linford]

it left the country. It barely touched base. Loads ended up in German banks, and an awful lot ended up in the London property market. A bond issue by the Greek government would be succeeded almost instantly by a spike in deposits in overseas banks.

Worse still......it wasn't recorded. The previous conservative government simply cooked the books. And then, when PASOK got in the truth came out.

Now, when you go to Spain you can see the money. The roads are just beautiful, the railways make ours look silly and there's lovely public buildings. But Greece - check out the £5M+ property market in London and German banks. And that is why the Greek people are so very angry.

Spain is screwed as well though. Massive public debts = governments spending well beyond their means, and providing an unrealistic level of public sector benefit which exceeds the income from taxes raised.

We are also screwed, and it is going to get tougher and tougher and tougher here until the money paid out to provide the services by the state is less than is raised.
Scares the shoot out of me when I look hard at it if I'm honest. Even the ConDems are printing money now to balance the books....

 

[Edge705]

Now, when you go to Spain you can see the money. The roads are just beautiful, the railways make ours look silly and there's lovely public buildings. But Greece - check out the £5M+ property market in London and German banks. And that is why the Greek people are so very angry.

Yes nice roads in spain and Ireland built with billions from the british purse via brussles of course

 

[Ashtrayhead]

Yes nice roads in spain and Ireland built with billions from the british purse via brussles of course

Also in Greece with any new major road projects. They have massive signs up showing how much is being contributed. Takes them nearly as long as British roadworks!

 

[Lien Sdrawde]

Many thanks. I feel well informed

 

[Globalti]

A bit late to this thread... a Greek contact told me that the "accepted wisdom" in the Greek business community is that 90% of Greece's wealth is in the hands of eight obscenely rich men, most of them shippers and all of the money outside the country, mostly in London. The Greek government called them all together and said to them: "Pay us just ten percent of the taxes you owe us and we can pay off all the debts and set Greece up."

The answer? They refused, on the grounds that they didn't want to reveal their tax affairs to the Greek government.

 

[Brains]

A bit late to this thread... a Greek contact told me that the "accepted wisdom" in the Greek business community is that 90% of Greece's wealth is in the hands of eight obscenely rich men, most of them shippers and all of the money outside the country, mostly in London. The Greek government called them all together and said to them: "Pay us just ten percent of the taxes you owe us and we can pay off all the debts and set Greece up."

The answer? They refused, on the grounds that they didn't want to reveal their tax affairs to the Greek government.

There is a lot more to this story, well known in maritime circles.

Many of the 'London Greeks' (and there are a lot more than 8 families) as they were known, moved to the UK in the middle of the last century, their Grandfather had been a sponge fisherman, son became a minor ship owner on the inter-island trade, grandson could read and write and moved the family to the centre of the biggest maritime Empire around at the time, (that had special tax rates for Ship owning companies) and went into the shipping coal business. The next generations were born and bread in the UK, went to the best public schools.

We are now have generations five and six taking over the reins of power in the companies, they are now in their 40's went on to study at Harvard, Yale, Oxford and Cambridge emerging with top class degrees in business management.

Gordon Brown, he of great wisdom, as one of his first moves when newly appointed as Chancellor was to say to the London Greeks, who had been enjoying the special UK rates of tax for many years, and said "pay us tax at UK rates or else piss off",
So they did.
Gordon arranged that instead of getting a small percentage of a large pot, we got none at all. (Hence the reason why the ConDems are wary about pissing off the Bankers, they may have learnt a lesson )

The owners came to an agreement with a friendly government (Greece) who welcomed them back with open arms, set up special tax deals and they moved their operations out of the UK to Greece. Most of them had left by 2003.

Ship-owning is the ultimate capitalist game, by it's very nature is very difficult to tax, as the major asset (the ship) is totally mobile. It's very simple, I'll pay as little tax as I can, if you change me to much, I'll simply go elsewhere.

The Greek government have the same choice as Gordon, a small percentage of a large pie, or no pie at all.

The ex London Greeks in the meantime have lined up the next bolt hole, should Greece think of clamping down, and the Greek government is well aware of the fact.

 

[dellzeqq]

that would make sense if Greek billionaires (along with Chinese, Russian and Indian billionaires) hadn't been major buyers of expensive London property in the latter half of the last decade. And Brown's non-dom tax turned out to be £30,000, which is not a great deal to somebody buying a £5M flat.

 

[Globalti]

Fascinating, thanks Brains.

 

[deanE]

As for what Greece has done with the money (which is equivalent to nearly USD300k per person of working age in Greece) and you have 30+ years of a massive state enterprise, a very generous welfare state, inefficient tax collection from a badly designed system and huge tax evasion issues.

Apart from the massive state enterprise it sounds very much like the UK to me.