A Greek magazine editor has been arrested for publishing a list of Greek citizens with deposits in Swiss bank accounts that the Greek government has been sitting on for 2 years. The names were originally sent to the Greek government by the current head of the IMF, Christine Lagarde while she was the French finance minister, back in 2010.

Kostas Vaxevanis announced on his twitter account on Sunday morning that he was being arrested after publishing the list containing 2,000 names. It took 15 armed policeman to make sure he did not “try to escape” (they must have been sooooo disappointed when he didn’t). His court hearing has been scheduled for the 1st November.

The list is reported to have originally come from an employee at HSBC in Switzerland & revealed details of around €2Bn worth of deposits at the HSBC branch in Geneva.

Papakonstantinou, the former minister & recipient of the “French gift”, told the Greek parliament on Wednesday that he “did not know what had happened to the original list”, which was reportedly contained on a USB key. The current finance minister, Yannis Sournaras, confirmed on the same day that he had asked France to “urgently” resend a copy, only 2 years after the Greek establishment had rushed to ignore the original.

The list, from the “I-do-not-know-what-happened-to-it” USB key went viral on the internet & included three former ministers, several politicians, & Stavros Papastavros, a senior advisor to the Greek Prime Minister. It also named a  significant number of civil servants working at the Finance Ministry, as well as several well-known business & media figures, as well as other members of “the great & the good”.

It is not illegal for Greeks to hold a bank account outside of the country but the possibility of wealthy Greeks using offshore accounts to avoid taxes has created “some tensions” during the current unrest over the Government’s austerity plans.

Greek officials claim that the information was illegally obtained and cannot be used as evidence in any legal proceedings against those failing to meet their tax obligations.