FinMin says no one in Croatia untouchable over tax evasion
There are no untouchables in Croatia when it comes to tax evasion, Finance Minister Boris Lalovac said on Tuesday, commenting on investigations of several Croatian citizens with huge amounts in foreign bank accounts.
They have been called to the Tax Administration to explain “such large amounts and declare their assets,” he told Croatian reporters in Brussels, adding that “there are no untouchables, everyone will have to render accounts and say where all that money comes from, so that we can see if there has been tax evasion.”
He said the office for serious tax fraud, on whose establishment he “personally insisted… has started yielding results.”
Lalovac said there were certainly more cases of undeclared savings and amounts difficult to explain, given that access could not be obtained to accounts in Austria and Switzerland, which have some sort of bank confidentiality. “I hope we will get access to those accounts too, but this is a good step to show that everything must be reported in Croatia, that there are no tax havens. The European Commission is working on that too and strongly supports us in this.”
The Finance Ministry said on Monday that 20 Croatian citizens with large amounts in accounts in other European Union countries were under investigation. Each has earned over one million kuna on interest and 14 of them are Croatian residents, whose interest income totals HRK 51 million and whose savings total HRK 1.7 billion.
