The tycoons lie low while the rest of Greece suffers.
While money pours out of Greek banks and Europe debates whether or not Greece deserves its next handout, the people potentially in the best position to help shore up the nation’s finances are mainly keeping their heads down.
They are among the wealthiest Greeks — whether shipping magnates, whose tax-free status is enshrined in the constitution, or the so-called oligarchs who have accumulated vast wealth via their dominance in core areas of the economy like oil, gas, media, banking and even cement.
Astute investors, they have been reluctant to lend a hand to the Greek treasury through the risky proposition of buying government bonds. But they have also been slow to dispense funds to philanthropies trying to combat the mounting social ills that their nation’s economic collapse has wrought — drawing a sharp rebuke from the head of a foundation created from Greek shipping wealth that has become Greece’s largest charitable donor in recent years.
Now, with the country’s top vote-getter, the leftist firebrand Alexis Tsipras, talking more and more about nationalizing companies and industries and, in the words of his top economic adviser, “taxing the rich,” there is even more incentive to lie low. ... Last year alone, an estimated 8 billion euros ($10.2 billion) in collectible taxes were in arrears — nearly half of the country’s budget deficit.
What the shipping magnates are not doing, though, is paying taxes. Mr. Martinos’s company, for example, bases its fleet of tankers offshore — as do all shipping companies here — although the administrative offices are in Athens. Greece’s income tax revenue is 7.3 percent of gross domestic product, well below the 11 percent average for euro zone countries, according to Eurostat.
Would shipping’s special tax exclusion change under a left-wing government? It is hard to say. Euclid Tsakalotos, a top economic adviser to Mr. Tsipras, said in an interview last week that the first thing Mr. Tsipras would do was to “tax the people that past governments have been afraid of taxing.”
Many shipowners and other wealthy Greeks are said to be taking the long view, arguing that Greeks will come to their senses in the next election and not vote in large numbers for Mr. Tsipras if they become convinced that it means a forced march out of the euro zone.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/24/business/global/as-greece-turns-leftward-its-tycoons-stay-in-background.html
Greek tycoons sound a lot like our own.
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