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Italy PM slams 'hypocrisy' over tax fraud

21 May 2013, 21:31 CET
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(ROME) - Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta on Tuesday complained of "incredible hypocrisy on a European level" in the fight against tax fraud on the eve of a one-day Brussels summit dedicated to the issue.

"Many have raised the question of tax havens and I agree completely that more needs to be done," but "the problem is that there is incredible hypocrisy at a European level," Letta told members of parliament's upper house.

The idea of cracking down on tax fraud "is not received well by some because of the loss of easy earnings," the premier said, without fingering any particular country.

Wednesday's talks in Brussels will be dedicated to the political fight to uncover unpaid taxes hidden away in Swiss or even EU bank vaults.

European governments last week firmed up plans to share bank records across borders for tax collection -- but failed to prise open key savers' data in Austria and Luxembourg.

While the European Commission won a mandate to negotiate new transparency channels with global banking haven Switzerland, pressure on the two holdouts now goes to the Brussels summit.

The overall drive is intended to recover a chunk of what the EU estimates is a trillion euros every year in lost taxes that could help job creation and growth in a time of dogged recession and record unemployment affecting tens of millions of European citizens.

"At a moment when all the (27 member) states are calling for sacrifices from their citizens... the fight against tax fraud is a moral imperative, an indispensable aim," Letta said.

"The international fight against fraud and tax evasion is a problem which calls for co-ordinated solutions on an international scale. Transparency is needed and faint-heartedness is no longer acceptable," he said.


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