Here’s just one unfunded, undeclared hole in our public finances. It amounts to a loss of £1billion between now and the due date of the next general election.
It is, in fact, one of many similar holes which, collectively, are now turning into a sieve. And this one even has a name: Chris Rokos.
He is the 55-year-old hedge fund genius who has just decided to leave Britain before this Government announces any further ways of confiscating his money.
To which, no doubt, a few of the more bovine, tribal Lefties will squawk ‘good riddance’ and give Andy Burnham a thumbs-up.
Anyone with half a brain and a calculator, however, will have their head in their hands. Because this is very bad news.
For, until now, Mr Rokos has routinely come near the very top of the list of Britain’s highest taxpayers, writing an annual cheque worth (at the last estimate) £330million, to the Treasury.
That would equate to handing over the best part of £2billion in the course of this five-year Parliament – enough to buy, say, six frigates for the Royal Navy or 20 F-35 jets for the RAF or pay the annual salaries of at least 40,000 nurses. Except, that he has just quietly packed his bags and moved to a country which does not take him and his wealth for granted.
Indeed, as I discovered this week, they are cock-a-hoop about welcoming this particular economic migrant.
Robert Hardman pictured in Athens, Greece, after Chris Rokos became the latest millionaire to leave Britain due to Labour tax raids
Chris Rokos, the 55-year-old hedge fund genius, has decided to leave Britain before this Government announces any further ways of confiscating his money
The Acropolis looms over the city of Athens, which is attracting an exodus of wealthy Brits
Britain has not just lost Mr Rokos’s whopping contribution to the Treasury coffers. Up to now, he has been a very remarkable philanthropist, funding many scholarships at his alma mater, Oxford University, and handing £190million to its arch rival, Cambridge.
There is a vital Chris Rokos Fellowship at the London Institute of Cancer Research and similarly important orthopaedic research going on thanks to him at Imperial College, London. Nor is he a transient non-dom, simply shifting from one international jurisdiction to another. He is home-grown.
The former state school whizz-kid from Hammersmith, West London, has also paid millions into a scholarship fund so that, every year, four boys from modest backgrounds, can, as he himself did, enjoy a fully-funded free education at Eton.
At the same time, he has rescued one of the West country’s finest homes from ruin and decay. At the last count, hundreds of local jobs were dependent on restoration work at Tottenham House in Wiltshire.
It is understood Mr Rokos will still complete the project. But what next? Will he continue to pump money into a country which is no longer home? The media-shy father-of-five is not saying.
However, well-placed sources have confirmed that his departure is not some cunning exercise in acrobatic accountancy. Mr Rokos is moving his whole life and his business, too. That means that we will lose a whole cluster of higher-rate taxpayers. This month’s news was swiftly followed by the disclosure that the UK-based senior portfolio manager of global hedge fund giant Millennium and his team will be following suit.
What should (but won’t) give Chancellor John Healey even more food for thought is their destination: Greece. Just ten years ago, Mr Rokos’s new home was an economic basket case run by a bunch of Left-wing loonies lauded by the British Left.
Now, after taking a scythe to a bloated, corrupt public sector, Greece is surging ahead economically. Instead of just talking vaguely about ‘growth’ over pints and pork scratchings, as the Burnham administration prefers, the Greeks are continuing to deliver the real thing.
The Flisvos Marina in Athens, home to billions of euros worth of super yachts
Hedge fund expert Thanassis Drogossis (pictured) said Greece has undergone a remarkable recovery in the past seven years, to the point where the country’s stock market has seen a ten-fold rise in daily trading
Last year, the centre-right New Democracy government of Kyriakos Mitsotakis grew the economy by 2.1 per cent (we managed 1.3). While we rack up ever greater national debt, the Greeks are overpaying on the debt schedule to bring theirs down.
It is money owed from the days when the country was haemorrhaging cash through years of socialist incompetence, not least a farcical benefits system (full-salary state pensions for hundreds of jobs ranging from train drivers to hairdressers, with a retirement age of 53).
Greece avoided bankruptcy, if not anarchy, only thanks to vast loans from the EU – in return for draconian cost-cutting.
Fast forward a decade and the country has undergone a Thatcherite process of national rejuvenation while it is Britain which is being dragged down by a benefits behemoth. And that problem is only going to get worse as other wealthy Brits look at ‘doing a Rokos’.
As every day brings word of another Labour tax on wealth, while our £350billion welfare budget goes undisturbed, so more of ‘those with the broadest shoulders’ (as the Left like to call the rich) may think about slinging their bags over those shoulders and looking elsewhere. Greece is now a prime candidate.
As of June, the Greeks have revised an extensive new system of residency arrangements and tax incentives (known as Law 5313) which have propelled Greece to the top of the preferred destinations for expat Brits.
Sir Keir Starmer’s 2024 election win had already triggered a dash for the exit among the super-rich, with four main options: the United Arab Emirates (including Dubai) and Italy, plus those tax-averse stalwarts, Switzerland and Monaco.
Since then, regional war has made the UAE significantly less appealing while Italy has tightened up some of its thresholds. According to the relocation experts Henley & Partners, Greece is now at number one on its list of 2026 global residency destinations.
Properties like this one are valued at 15-20million euros on the Athens coast
Dimitris Angelakos, 43, who has started two new companies, Angel Yachts and Angel Development, devoted to superyachts and real estate
UK boss Stuart Wakeling explains to me that every would-be expat has a unique set of requirements, though most are not merely individual but family applications.
And those wanting sea, space, sun plus good schools and good connections with their former homeland are now increasingly plumping for Greece.
A five-year renewable ‘golden visa’ scheme offers residency in exchange for buying a home for more than €250,000. Further up the scale, there is the option of an annual flat tax fee of €100,000 for all global – i.e. non-Greece sourced – income (for up to 15 years). Though you are still liable for Greek income tax on purely Greece-sourced income (plus a 50 per cent discount for the self-employed), the tax on all dividends and bank bonuses is just 5 per cent.
There is also a deal for UK pensioners, who can stay for up to 15 years and just pay a flat tax rate of seven per cent on all income. Even what we might call the ‘entry-level’ wealthy are doing their sums. For someone earning upwards of £250,000, already clobbered on their second home and facing a mansion tax on the main home, then a diet of olive, feta and calamari starts to appeal.
‘Let’s be realistic. We are not about to see the entire hedge fund community move from London,’ says Thanassis Drogossis of Pantelakis Securities, a leading Athens stockbroker. ‘But Chris Rokos has stirred a lot of interest and it is a signal that there are great opportunities.’
He points to a conference of institutional investors earlier this month here in Athens. Many were traders from London. ‘They were cheering what Chris Rokos has done and talking about doing the same.’
Mr Drogossis explains Greece has undergone a remarkable recovery in the past seven years, to the point where the country’s stock market has seen a ten-fold rise in daily trading.
Previously stagnating banks now have billions to invest. The national economic crisis – which followed the global banking crisis of 2009 – has seen a wholesale change in Greek attitudes. People no longer expect the state to provide everything, nor does it offer comfy non-jobs for life.
The Ellinikon development includes the tallest building in Greece, the 48-floor Riviera Tower (a CGI image of the development pictured)
A CGI image of the Ellinikon multibillion euro development in Athens, a £9billion Dubai-style waterside mix of villas and apartments rapidly taking shape on the site of the former Athens airport
Vassilis Karatzas, senior adviser to finance minister Kyriakos Pierrakakis – who was in direct contact with the Rokos team prior to his move here – emphasises that this is not about wooing gazillionaires for show.
‘It’s about jobs. We want to create high-level jobs. We want the well-schooled graduate of the Athens School of Economics to stay and work in Greece. These new investors will want to employ local talent and that talent is being under-utilised,’ he says.
The other priority, he adds, is reassuring would-be investors that Greece is not going to return to its old ways. ‘We have a sound macro-economic regime with a clear path. It’s about ability and predictability.’
I well remember reporting from Athens in the dark days of the recent past – the furious protests descending into riots; the graffiti; the filthy streets and restaurant owners desperate for cash rather than risk money in a bank which might go under at any minute.
It’s a very different Greece which I encounter when I go in search of the sort of life Mr Rokos and fellow expats will now enjoy.
Take the vast Flisvos Marina on the southern end of the Athenian riviera. Ten years ago, most of these quaysides were empty, many foreign yacht-owners having moved their vessels to other jurisdictions.
Today, it is absolutely packed with some of the grandest superyachts I have ever seen. There are 300 in total, with a combined value of £2.5billion. What’s more, there is a waiting list of 60 owners wanting to berth a yacht here (average price; £1,000-a-night, not including electricity – which can top £15,000 a month if all the lights and air conditioning are running).
There is no shortage of people, either, wanting to spend £50million on buying one of these things, or anywhere between £300,000 and £1million a week chartering one for a holiday plus the mandatory 15 per cent tip for the crew.
Robert Hardman pictured with estate agent Christoforos Christofidis, who sells multimillion pound homes in Athens
Multimillion euro superyachts moored in the bay near the Four Seasons Astir Palace Hotel in Athens
‘Many of our clients are British and, in the last couple of years, that number has gone up from 20 to 30 per cent,’ says Dimitris Angelakos who has just placed a £250million order for three new yachts, each of them well over 200ft in length.
He and his brothers are the fifth generation of a prominent Greek shipping family. Until five years ago, they focused entirely on merchant shipping, but now Mr Angelakos, 43, has started two new companies, Angel Yachts and Angel Development, devoted to superyachts and real estate.
‘Greece is rebranding itself. Our people have evolved,’ he explains over gourmet sushi at the Matsuhisa restaurant, looking down on half a dozen superyachts out at anchor in the bay at Vouliagmeni.
‘The levels of service and efficiency you used to see in the UK and Germany and the US – well now people are finding that here. We call it ‘philoxenia’, friendship towards foreigners. The difference here is that they can jump on a yacht and be within one hour of 20 islands and two hours of 40.’ With us at dinner is his real estate consultant, Christoforos Christofidis of CCRE, a leading Athens estate agency, which has seen a surge in interest from British wealth creators.
One prime destination is the new Ellinikon development, a £9billion Dubai-style waterside mix of villas and apartments rapidly taking shape on the site of the former Athens airport.
It includes the tallest building in Greece, the 48-floor Riviera Tower. Mr Angelakos has already bought the penthouse apartment – ‘it has to belong to a Greek,’ he laughs.
Many of those Brits who are ‘doing a Rokos’ are looking at the various options in what is being marketed as an entire new city. Ellinikon will have 10,000 separate residential units, ranging from £500,000 to £70 million in price.
Mr Christofidis points out that others are looking to quiet, discreet northern suburbs of Athens like Ekali, to be close to the top schools, including St Catherine’s. Otherwise known as ‘the British school’, it has now expanded to accommodate 1,300 pupils.
I drop in at the ultra-chic Ekali Club, with its huge pool and tennis courts. Another attraction up here, among the trees and low-lying villas, is that the temperature is on average four degrees lower than in the city centre.
CCRE’s Stelios Kallioras shows me round a typical Ekali residence, a sprawling, angular modern villa with indoor and outdoor pool, gym, cinema, office wing, double-height library and staff quarters. Currently rented out at £15,000 a month, it is on the market for £7million.
The one downside, it must be said, is the traffic. Getting around Athens is dreadful. From this leafy suburb to the city centre or the mighty Acropolis is only ten miles, but it is an hour’s drive at rush hour.
Other factors which account for the rise in British interest are relatively simple paperwork and what Henley & Partners call ‘residence optionality’. Greece has a strong second home culture (most ordinary Athenian families have their place in town and a family-owned place on an island). Henley’s southern Europe expert, Marios Rafail, explains that expats like to do the same.
I talk to John (not his real name), an investment banker and Henley client who left London for Singapore some years ago. He wants to return to Europe because his university-age children are based there. Having ruled out tax-grab Britain, he has looked at other options, including Spain, Portugal and Italy.
‘Greece was so much easier. It took a few meetings and within two months, I have already sorted out residency,’ he tells me. ‘We haven’t moved yet – and haven’t even decided what sort of property to buy or where.
‘We’ll rent for a bit and check out a few islands and a few places in Athens. But there is no rush. The main thing is we have done it.’
Now that Mr Rokos has done it too, Labour needs to acknowledge a simple truth: there will be no ‘growth’ if you won’t curb your spending – and if your growers, like Homer’s hero, have already left on an odyssey of their own.
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