By Anthee Carassava, in Athens
Greek lawmakers have voted in favour of the criminal prosecution of former finance minister George Papaconstantinou for wiping the names of relatives from a list of 2,000 suspected tax cheats with Swiss bank accounts.
In a secret ballot, capping a marathon debate through the small hours of Tuesday, 166 deputies in the 300-seat Parliament voted for the former minister's prosecution on three charges of breach of faith, duty and tampering with a state document while at the helm of the finance ministry between 2009 and 2011.
Seventeen lawmakers were absent from the vote.
A five-member judicial council will convene later in the week to yield what officials expect to be a final legal review before a special supreme court hearing is set up to try the 52-year-old former official and architect of Greece's austerity.
The alleged cover-up marks the biggest case of fraud since the late founder of Greece's socialist PASOK party was put in the dock with a rash of senior ministers in connection with a multi-million dollar bank embezzlement and corruption scandal.
The latest case, exposed late last year and investigated by a special congressional committee since January, underscores long-standing failures by the Greek state to crack down on tax evasion.
The 'Lagarde list' contains the names of about 2,000 Greek tax cheats Even so, its landmark ruling by lawmakers drowned in fresh signs of swelling social unrest amid renewed fears of mass public sector layoffs and added austerity, three years after Greece's economy skid off the fiscal cliff, requiring 240bn euros in international bailouts.
Although Mr Papaconstantinou has denied any criminal wrongdoing, the probe showed that details from a number of bank accounts held by three of his relatives had been deleted from an initial list of some 2,000 tax cheats the minister received from Christine Lagarde, the head of the International Monetary Fund, when she was France's finance minister in 2010.
The list, however, went "missing" according to Mr Papacononstantinou, after a copy was passed on to the country's finance police more than a year later.
His successor, Evangelos Venizelos, now the head of the socialist PASOK party and part of an awkward coalition steering Greece to financial recovery, admitted to having a copy of the list in 2012, when the case came to light.
Opposition parties have openly accused Mr Venizelos and former socialist prime minister George Papandreou of complicity, demanding they too also face prosecution.
"I am the target for one and simple reason," Mr Papaconstantinou told lawmakers ahead of the vote. "Because I was the finance minister who put the country in the bailout process."
He lashed out at his successor and own political leader, saying he did nothing to investigate the list; rather, kept it in his desk drawer for months.
Mr Papaconstantinou, now retired from politics, faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted on all three charges.
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