Kathimerini — A backlog of almost 40,000 derivation of wealth (or pothen esches in Greek) forms submitted by politicians, judges and other public officials has built up because of a change to the law last year, which the government is considering addressing, sources told Kathimerini.
Until mid-2014, the anti-money laundering authority was responsible for investigating the forms and judging whether those submitting them had fully explained where their wealth came from. However, at that point the New Democracy-PASOK coalition passed an amendment that passed authority for these checks to a special committee, which lacked the capacity to undertake this oversight task.
The same committee has also been assigned the task of probing politicians’ pothen esches forms dating back to 1974. So the panel has not inspected any new forms since last year and some 38,000 declarations are currently thought to be outstanding.
