Greek tax-dodgers, Irish horse dealers and Chinese art cheats: please skip this column

It’s only fair to warn you — especially if you’re Greek, Irish or Chinese — that this week’s column contains negative stereotyping. I’ll leave the transsexuals to Rod Liddle, but I’m still bracing for the Twitter storm.

My propensity to commit this category of thought crime was first pointed out to me by Giorgos Papaconstantinou, the socialist former finance minister of Greece. A graduate of the LSE, George to his friends, he was his country’s most fluent spokesman during earlier stages of its financial crisis — and last May I came up against him in a debate about the pros and cons of ‘austerity’. I argued that the word itself was merely a synonym for the frugal, uncorrupt government supported by willing taxpayers that was largely absent in southern Europe, but that it was being larded with an excess of emotion about the temporary suffering it might cause. ‘That hits a nerve,’ retorted George: there were ‘too many stereotypes flying around’ when what was needed was empathy with his country’s plight and ‘a more relaxed fiscal path’.

That last phrase came to mind when I read that George now faces criminal investigation. He is accused of removing the names of three of his relatives from the ‘Lagarde list’ of 2,000 Greek citizens who held accounts at HSBC’s Geneva branch and may have been evading domestic taxes. This was sent to George as finance minister by his French opposite number Christine Lagarde (now head of the IMF) in 2010, but no investigation in Athens ensued. After he left office, the Lagarde spreadsheet was thought to have been lost — but has now turned up again on a memory stick, the French having provided a copy of the original for comparison.