Testimony continues in trial of ex-FinMin accused of shielding cousins from tax probe

Testimony in the high-profile trial of ex-FinMin George Papaconstantinou continued on Thursday with a former IT specialist at the finance ministry testifying on his cooperation with the one-time socialist politician.
Papaconstantinou faces two felony charges related to accusations that he deleted the names of three relatives (cousins) contained in an electronic file showing the names of Greek citizens with deposits in the Geneva branch of HSBC. The so-called "Lagarde list" takes its name from IMF chief Christine Lagarde, who gave the information to the Greek government at the time when she served as French FinMin.
Georgios Angelopoulos said he was given a USB flash memory stick with the information - more than 2,000 files in total ? in December 2010 and proceeded to identify the names of the top 20 depositors. He said the top 20 Greek depositors at the specific HSBC branch together held some 500 million dollars.
He said he did not see a name of "Papaconstantinou" on the list, but merely copied the contents on his PC and then printed a list of the top 20 depositors.
When asked by the court, he said he was well-acquainted with the Papaconstantinou family, given that he hails from the same region as the former FinMin.