Justice minister Miljenic: All tax evaders will have to pay taxes

Justice Minister Orsat Miljenic on Tuesday confirmed in Lepoglava, north of Zagreb, that an investigation would be launched to examine if Croatian citizens had evaded paying taxes by opening private bank accounts at the British HSBC bank.

Asked to comment on media claims that Croatian clients too had opened undeclared "black" accounts in HSBC, Miljenic said that citizens who had evaded paying taxes would "pay those taxes," and in some cases charges would be brought against them as tax evasion was a criminal act.

"We all live here and have to pay taxes," he said.

He recalled that all countries fought against tax evasion and that international cooperation was very important in that regard.

Miljenic said that bank confidentiality had been a huge problem once, that it still was but that those barriers were disappearing because the problem of tax evasion had to be dealt with together.

Britain's banking giant HSBC has admitted that its Swiss branch helped wealthy clients across the world to evade paying hundreds of millions of pounds worth of tax, British media has reported.

Documents leaked by whistleblower Herve Falciani, a former employee of HSBC's Swiss branch, in 2007 contain information about more than 100,000 clients from around the world and show that bankers helped clients deliberately evade taxes.

(Hina) sp

News | Justice