According to Omiros Tsapalos, a spokesman for the Ministry of National Economy and Finance, the AADE has targeted 20 well-known influencers who may charge as much as 10 thousand euros for a post. These individuals may declare incomes of 10 to 30 thousand euros but may have spent a few hundred thousand.

Tsapalos explained that the Independent Authority has set up a special task force on the issue of influencers. The agency has also been “running” a major data cross-checking operation for about a year. Under this operation, 3.8 million VAT numbers have been checked, and about 800 people have been called for explanations.

“A year ago, a huge data cross-check was launched by the AADE. They checked 3.8 million VAT numbers, individuals, and legal entities. The massive checks ended up with about 800 people, who, while declaring very low amounts as income, 10, 20, 30 thousand euros a year, were shown, according to the electronic transactions they have made and purchases they have made, to have incomes several times, a hundred times higher. That is, to have an income of 10,000 euros and spend 300-400 thousand euros a year. That’s why each of them will be asked to explain, that the AADE is in the process of communicating with these people. Maybe the explanations they will bring us will be convincing and justify their expenses, we are waiting to see. These are for 2023, we will start the same process en masse for 2024 in a more automated way, using more sophisticated digital methods so that it will not take many months for the results, as was the case in 2023,” Tsapalos, told Action24.

“The checks will be done digitally using algorithms. We will check the expenses, the declared, and the account movements, where bank secrecy is allowed and not required to be lifted, to put all these into a single platform, evaluate them, and come out with several candidates to be audited, he added, referring to how the audits will be done from now on.

On money trafficking, the Ministry of National Economy spokesman said that when there is a large black money market,” then bells ring, and the fines are heavy. You pay the tax on the amount you tried to hide plus a 50% penalty unless we are talking about other criminal offenses, such as VAT concealment, where the fines are higher.”

Regarding influencers and their income from posts advertising products and services on social media, he said: “There has been a survey for some time now on 20 cases of influencers operating in Greece. There have been hundreds of audits. A task force has been set up, a task force within the AADE that does just that. It scans influencers’ activity on the internet daily. Be careful, we don’t just scan faces. We don’t become everyone’s “Big Brother” on social media to see if they’re swimming in a pool or the sea if they have an expensive car. But when people are doing commercial activity online, advertising products overtly, and doing a transaction with a business that gives them a product and says “promote it”, there we are talking about another level of investigation, there we are talking about a commercial activity that needs scrutiny. All social media platforms enforce this: if I go and advertise a product or a service, I have to say that it is product placement, a commercial transaction with a supplier, or a company. If I don’t do it, I am targeted and this is not only happening in Greece. The Commission has launched a major investigation across Europe into influencers who don’t declare what they make. We are talking about big cases, showbiz people with millions of followers. There is no such thing as a tariff because we are talking about undeclared money. There are different amounts and costs involved. It can be that a post may need to pay 5-10 thousand euros to be made by a big influencer. We are talking about a lot of money, these cases are controlled. There are also serious influencers who do their job properly.”