Greece Sacks Top Tax Official

Wall Street Journal
March 10, 2011

Greece's finance minister has sacked the country's top tax official, Dimitris Georgakopoulos, for failing to boost revenue collections that have bedeviled the country's efforts to close its gaping budget deficit, a ministry official said Thursday.

"Mr. Georgakopoulos's resignation was requested by the finance minister," the official said. "It has been submitted and it has been accepted."

Mr. Georgakopoulos served as the ministry's general secretary for tax and customs, overseeing the government's deeply dysfunctional tax collection offices.

Despite efforts to overhaul the country's tax system, Greek government revenue collections in the past year and-a-half have consistently failed to meet budget targets.

"There was an evaluation of his performance and it was judged unsatisfactory with respect to his responsibilities, which are to oversee revenue collections," the official added.

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