200 “headhunters” under Troika orders

The Troika is asking the Greek FinMin to immediately recruit 200 "headhunters" to collect taxes on behalf of the tax authorities.

The IMF and EU report on the tax-collecting mechanism clearly raises an issue of also hiring private companies.

Specifically, the Troika experts are asking that the FinMin:

-       proceed immediately, even within March, to external recruiting of an additional 200 new auditors

-       to increase under priority the number of externally recruited auditors, without violating the rule of recruitment contracts that applies to the public sector

-       to find 500 more externally recruited auditors in 2013-14

They even specify that it will be desirable for many of them to have a law degree.

The private headhunters will be tasked with identifying and recording the income and assets of government debtors. Lawyers and accountants will specifically deal with the full verification of income and assets of the borrowers, while it is possible they might engage in the collection of debts, preparing the taking of enforced measures (notifications for overdue payments or foreclosures of real estate, rents, wages, etc.). They will be paid a commission against the amounts they will manage to bring to the treasury coffers.

The relevant legislation was passed in 2011 during minister Evangelos Venizelos’ administration, who was also the original inspirer.

For a while now the FinMin has been preparing the gradual privatization of the tax authorities. The planning started with the appearance of the negative impact of the memorandum measures, such as closures and mergers of tax offices and services, burdensome regulations on the insurance system of the State, pre-retirement availability and redundancy.

Especially the last three of these measures have led to a significant reduction in the FinMin services staff, and to a certain degree in the auditing and revenue capabilities of tax offices, Customs, SDOE and auditing centres.