VIENNA - Some 150 Austrians are on a list of Liechtenstein bank customers obtained by the German secret service as part of a massive tax evasion inquiry, Austria's finance ministry announced Tuesday.
Austrian investigators are currently in Germany to examine the list of clients of Liechtenstein's LGT bank, in an affair that has raised questions about the Alpine principality's secretive financial sector and sparked tax investigations in countries ranging from Australia to the US, including several in Europe.
That the names of Austrian citizens figure on the bank's list does not imply they are guilty of tax evasion, the finance ministry said.
Information on them collected in Germany is expected to be transferred to Austria within two weeks, where it will be examined before any judicial process is launched, it said.
A bilateral agreement allows Berlin and Vienna to exchange fiscal information.
Germany launched its biggest ever tax fraud investigation after it was revealed last month that its intelligence agency had paid a former employee of the bank four million euros (six million dollars) for a list of around 1,400 of its clients.
The move sparked a worldwide probe that has so far included Australia, Britain, Canada, France, Greece, Italy, New Zealand, Spain, Sweden and the United States.
In Austria, a spokesman for Vienna's public prosecutor's office has said that infractions of more than 75,000 euros figure on the bank lists. But the finance ministry earlier suggested that any repercussions would be limited in scope.
The investigation has prompted calls for an EU clampdown on tax havens such as Liechtenstein.
But Austria, along with Belgium and Luxembourg, warned last week that any tightening of fiscal regulation could only be effective if territories outside the EU, such as Liechtenstein, Andorra and Monaco, were included.
lad/pfe/mat/eb
03/11/2008 14:11 GMT