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Amazing Greece! Public Revenues GS charged with breach of duty for delaying tax payments by TV stations

This country is amazing! Bright shining sun, endless beaches of fine sand… and public officials who can be charged with breach of duty. Such a things does not occur often in this amazing Greece. But it did today. An Athens prosecutor filed charges on breach of duty against the General Secretary for Public Revenues, Katerina Savvaidou. What did she do?  She allegedly issued a decision before the January 2015 elections that allowed television broadcasters to delay ad tax payments to the state for a whole year and not for a month as the law stipulated.

The Athens First Instance Court prosecutor’s office filed charges of breach of duty against the general secretary for public revenues, Katerina Savvaidou, on Thursday.

Savvaidou faces the misdemeanor charge because in January she allegedly extended the time that TV stations had to hand over to the state revenues from a special tax on advertisements.

The broadcasters are meant to transfer the earnings from the 20 percent levy on the 20th of the following month but on January 12, Savvaidou allegedly issued a decision allowing them more time.

The decision came a few days before the general elections that month. (ekathimerini)

Katerina Savvaidou was appointed as General Secretary for Public Revenues in July 2014 by the New Democracy-PASOK coalition government.

The funny thing is that in summer, when the SYRIZA-ANEL government signed the agreement and the 3. bailout with creditors, one of the criticism points brought up by disappointed SYRIZA voters was that “the government had avoided to collect the advertisement tax from the TV stations” alleging that Tsipras had made unholy deals with the powerful Greek TV stations.

But now we learn how the rabbit was running in the woods…

Media relations with politics is a painful issue in Greece. But that’s the subject of a post I will probably never manage to write. Then it needs a book, not a simple blog post. However, the article “Greek Media in Disarray” published on the London School of Economics & Political Science website may give you a clue about Media and what the author describes as “ingrained clientelism”.

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6 comments

  1. off topic – but a funny story:

    i was on assignment as a photographer during the first gulf war and was in diyarbakir, turkey – which at the time was braced to become the northern front of the ‘war’ in iraq.

    because i spoke turkish and greek- i was asked by the turkish press authorities to help a group of greek ‘journalists’ get set up.

    it was mr. papadakis and crew – only a year or two since the founding of ANT1, but he had already become a fixture in greek homes.

    i will never forget how they worked. i found them a translator who would collect the wire stories which they then enriched, personalized and filed. the rest of the day was spent shopping and buying rugs and antiques in the pazar. their suites were party central at night!

    all of this against a backdrop of war. useless people!

    • keeptalkinggreece

      I better no comment on that

    • Giaourti Giaourtaki

      Sorry, but I think this was the 2nd Gulf War, the 1st one was the one between Iraq and Iran.

      • keeptalkinggreece

        no, the 1. was when Iraq invaded Kuweit

        • Giaourti Giaourtaki

          May be in the American-Euro-Centrist way of rewriting history but for working classes and for millions of people who are victims in this the 1st Gulf War was 1980 and you can ask anyone who was on anti-war-rallies in the early eighties that they’ve called it so.

          • costa sakellariou

            giaourti…ase re megale…

            you are always correcting people on everything – and it gets tiresome sometimes…

            in the english speaking world…the iran-iraq war is called just that.

            the first gulf war was bush senior’s war.

            the second gulf war was george bush jr’s war…

            i was a photographer covering conflict in the middle east – this is a world i know…

            and the first anti-war rally i attended was in 1978 against the israeli invasion of southern lebanon…a long time ago!