ATHENS – Greece’s crusade to gain revenues – high brackets pushing people to find ways to avoid paying – is seeing stepped up inspections with more than 48,000 on-site audits revealing more than 20 million euros ($22.16 million) in tax evasion.

That brought offenders fines of more than 1.34 million euros ($1.48 million, the Independent Authority for Public Revenue (AADE) said, adding that it applied sanctions in 628 cases that closed 490 businesses and fines for the others.

While many of Greece’s rich hide their wealth in secret foreign bank accounts that’s proved elusive to get at, AADE is now using cross-checks of tax information and data to identify undeclared income.

A new digital unit uses tools such as Artificial Intelligence to hunt for evaders, a supplement to other means such as Point of Service (POS) machines required of businesses and professionals, many of which don’t use them and demand cash.

Inspectors are looking not just at bank accounts and even bank deposit boxes they’re allowed to open and access but property owners letting out their units on short-term platforms without reporting the income.

Greece has moved swiftly into automatic processing of tax returns for public workers and wage earners who can accept and send auto-filled forms that will be completed automatically by AADE without taxpayers needing accountants.

So far though, out of 1.4 million auto-filled forms AADE sent to wage-earners and pensioners, only 420,000 were submitted as is, with the rest requiring small or more extensive amending, the goal being to have almost all be automatic.