Chris Rokos, the founder of Rokos Capital Management, is preparing to switch his tax residency to Greece and will open an office in Athens, according to Bloomberg News.
He paid an estimated £330 million in the latest tax year, which made him the third-biggest taxpayer in the United Kingdom, according to the Sunday Times Tax List. The Sunday Times Rich List puts his wealth at £3 billion.
A spokeswoman for the firm declined to comment on the reports.
Greece offers new arrivals a fixed annual bill on everything they earn outside the country. Under Article 5A of Law 4172/2013, an individual who transfers tax residence to Greece pays a lump sum of €100,000 per tax year, irrespective of the amount of income earned abroad, for a maximum of 15 fiscal years, according to PwC’s Worldwide Tax Summaries.
PwC states that applicants must not have been Greek tax residents for seven of the eight years before the transfer, and that they must invest at least €500,000 in Greek property, businesses, or securities within three years of applying.
Greece extends its non-dom regime for investors to relatives for an additional €20,000 per person per tax year.
Christos Vardikos of Vardikos & Vardikos in Athens describes how that works in practice. An applicant appoints a proxy to obtain a Greek tax number, opens an account with a Greek bank, and moves €600,000 into it in their own name.
That €600,000 splits in two. The first €500,000 shows the applicant can meet the investment obligation, and the remaining €100,000 covers the flat tax itself, which falls due once Greece grants the status.
Each dependent adds €20,000 on the same terms. Vardikos notes that none of the money is blocked, and that showing the funds exist on the date of the application is enough.
Applicants also give Greece their UK tax reference and their most recent UK return. Anyone who already owns property in Greece can set it against the €500,000 obligation in some circumstances, and the application itself is filed online.
The tax election and the right to live in Greece are two separate questions. The UK government tells British citizens who want to live in Greece to apply for a national visa before arrival, then a temporary residence permit after it.
Christina Georgaki of Georgaki Law Firm in Thessaloniki points to the golden visa, the permit for financially independent people, and the digital nomad visa as the routes her clients use to answer the second one.
Georgaki also sees descendants of Greek emigrants in the United Kingdom, the United States, and Australia claiming citizenship by descent in large numbers, three and four generations on. Anyone who qualifies that way removes the residence question altogether.
The attraction of that arrangement grew when the United Kingdom ended its own version. From April 6, 2025, HMRC abolished the remittance basis of taxation and replaced domicile with tax residence as the connecting factor, so the UK’s non-dom regime no longer exists.
All UK residents now pay tax on worldwide income and gains as they arise.
Relief on foreign income and gains reaches a qualifying new resident during the first four years of UK residence, and requires at least 10 consecutive tax years of non-UK residence beforehand.
Inheritance tax changed on the same date. HM Treasury set the test as long-term UK residence, which it defined as residence in at least 10 of the 20 tax years before the chargeable event.
A long-term resident who leaves remains within the scope of the UK’s residence-based inheritance tax rules on non-UK assets for at least three tax years.
The tail lengthens by one tax year for each year of residence beyond 13, so someone resident for 17 of the previous 20 years on leaving remains in scope for seven.
Robert Watts, who compiles the Sunday Times Rich List, has described a sharp rise in the number of British nationals now resident in Dubai, Switzerland, and Monaco. The Rich List research points to an outflow of wealthy residents after the non-dom crackdown and the inheritance tax changes.
Vardikos puts the demand at one Athens firm at around 20 requests a month from the United Kingdom, most of which become live cases.
Two of the names reported alongside Rokos went to countries with their own flat-rate arrangements. Michael Platt, who co-founded BlueCrest Capital Management, reportedly switched his residency to Switzerland, and Richard Gnodde, a Goldman Sachs executive, moved to Italy.
Italy raised its own flat tax to €300,000 for individuals who transfer their residency to Italy from the start of 2026, under the 2026 Budget Law. Greece’s charge is €100,000.
Swiss cantons negotiate a lump-sum annual tax with new residents, ranging from CHF 250,000 to CHF 1 million a year.
Against those two, Georgaki believes Greece has “the best non dom program at the moment”. Vardikos reads it as an estate planning tool as much as an income tax one, for a European taxpayer who wants to leave their current tax residence behind.
Rokos Capital Management reportedly manages around 20 billion US dollars. The Abu Dhabi Global Market announced the firm’s Abu Dhabi office after granting it a Financial Services Permission, alongside existing offices in London, New York, and Singapore.
A change of residence does not switch off a British tax bill on its own. If Rokos has been a UK resident for at least 10 of the past 20 tax years, his non-UK assets will remain within reach of UK inheritance tax for years after the Athens office opens.
