The Finance Ministry is trying to unravel a huge fuel distribution racket involving customs officials, tanker trucks, supply companies, captains, municipal authorities, hospitals and gasoline stations. The racket causes an estimated revenue loss for the government of more than 300 million euros anually, which looks like increasing as legislation and ministerial decisions paradoxically help the violators in many cases.

The ministry’s inadequate infrastructure, which makes it unable to track the supply orders for ships, and the fact that even municipalities and hospitals place orders (probably unwittingly) with tax evaders create a fuzzy picture which legislation actually encourages.

Deputy Finance Minister Apostolos Fotiadis’s latest decision is just such a piece of legislation: It allows an 8 percent divergence when stocks are measured, and does not stipulate any tax inspections in fuel storage areas. This means that the estimated 46 percent of gasoline station owners who evaded taxes or engaged in other violations in the first half of 2003, will not have to pay any income tax and, indeed, have been given an official blessing to continue their activities.

Ministry officials reject such claims, arguing that the decision provides for customs inspections to be carried out; they forget, however, that customs violations automatically mean tax violations for which the perpetrators will not be held accountable.

An official of the Gas Station Owners Association told Kathimerini that they are rather pleasantly surprised and fully satisfied with the 8 percent fluctuation allowance. The estimated incidence of violations in the distribution of fuel has been advancing rapidly in recent years; from 7.61 percent in 2000, it grew to 17.15 percent last year. The Finance Ministry has found irregularities almost throughout the fuel distribution system, with the exception of refineries.