Bulgaria’s National Revenue Agency (NRA) has written to Germany’s federal ministry of finance to request information about accounts held at banks in Switzerland by Bulgarians.
 
NRA head Krassimir Stefanov sent the letter after the German finance ministry said that it was taking steps to get information about Swiss bank accounts held by Germans.
 
Recently, it emerged that Germany had offered a compact disc of information about accounts held at Swiss banks – and not only by Germans but other nationalities too, including Bulgarians.
 
Should the NRA be able to secure this information, it would begin investigating whether there was any evidence of tax evasion by the holders of the accounts. Large-scale evasion would be referred to prosecutors, the agency said.
 
Similarly, in 2008 Bulgaria requested information from Germany after Berlin acquired a CD containing information on bank accounts in Liechtenstein.
 
Bulgaria was part of the EU and those who did not pay tax would be heavily penalised, Stefanov said.
 
Bulgarian National Television (BNT) said that finance ministers of European countries that were seen as tax havens had held an informal meeting in Luxembourg.
 
The talks were related to the reluctance of offshore areas in Europe to give up banking secrecy - something that would threaten their role as financial centres, BNT said.
 
In March 2009, the countries agreed to pare back their strict legislation on banking secrecy and to assist foreign countries in detecting people hiding taxes.
 
Their goal was to avoid involvement in an international "black list"drawn up by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, BNT said.