“The list is currently being examined by the Chief Taxation Officer to confirm that those appearing on the list as Cypriots or with an address in Cyprus can justify the deposited amount,” Georgiades said.
“It will be processed so as to verify that taxation has been paid for the amounts deposited in the bank,” he added.
Georgiades said he would have no problem disclosing the names of people which will be found to be tax evaders after the examination of the list.
But the list has been forwarded to the speaker of the Cypriot Parliament, Yiannakis Omirou, for examination in the context of an ongoing investigation into the causes of Cyprus’s economic disaster.
Lawmakers are demanding that any names in the list of “politically exposed people” — meaning people holding state, government and party posts or are associated with the the banking system and the media — must be made public.
It is to be expected that it will not be long before the list is leaked to the media as it happened with similar documents in the past.
The “Lagarde List” is part of a wider list, the Falciani list, named after Herve Falciani, an HSBC bank computer technician who stole the data from the computers of his employers from 2006 through 2007 and handed them to then French finance Minister Christine Lagarde.
It is believed the list contains about 80,000 names of people with deposits at the bank.
Georgiades said the list obtained by Cypriot authorities contains only the names of either Cypriot people or foreign physical and legal entities who had given the bank a correspondence address in Cyprus.
The “Lagarde List” became prominent when it was handed to the Greek government in 2012, then negotiating the country’s bailout with international lenders.
