Greek MPs vote to indict former finance minister over Swiss bank accounts

Greece's former finance minister George Papaconstantinou will face a panel of judges after MPs voted in favour of indicting him over his handling of a list of Greeks with bank accounts in Switzerland.

A majority in Greece’s 300-seat parliament voted early today to ask a panel of judges to determine if Mr Papaconstantinou, a former finance minister in the government of George Papandreou, should be tried on charges including criminal breach of trust and falsifying a document.

Mr Papaconstantinou is being investigated for allegedly removing relatives' names from a list of Greeks with accounts at a branch of HSBC Holdings in Geneva.

The so-called Lagarde list is an electronic file of 2,062 people with deposits at the branch that was given to the government in 2010 by France's then-finance minister, Christine Lagarde.

Mr Papaconstantinou, who negotiated Greece's first bailout by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund in 2010, denied the charges speaking in parliament yesterday.