Akis-Mandelis on trial. Alogoskoufis-Markogiannakis to be investigated

The proposal signed by 108 MPs for the establishment of a preliminary investigative commission for the Siemens scandal, has been tabled in Parliament.

Furthermore, the MPs are proposing an evaluation of the data from the Three-Member Advisory Council, as provided for by the new law on “Criminal liability of ministers”. The council will further rule on any crimes that won’t be taken into account, or whether they will instead be referred to the Special Court of Civic Justice.

The four former ministers accused are Anastasios Mandelis and Akis Tsohatzopoulos from PASOK for passive corruption against the government and money laundering through criminal activities, and George Alogoskoufis and Chris Makrogiannakis from the New Democracy party for the crime of disloyalty against the public sector.

According to PASOK’s proposal, Mr Alogoskoufis and Mr. Markogiannakis are referred to the Commission, the former over the issue of having been the supervising minister of OTE and the second for the case of C4Is. sohatzopoulos and Mandelis are indicted for the PATRIOT arms programs and a 200.000-Deutschmark election funding respectively.

PASOK is also proposing to send all of the Commission’s findings on the Siemens scandal to civic justice in order to investigate any responsibility for acts within its area of jurisdiction, such as money laundering, for all other eight political figures who were mentioned in the report.

Specifically:

Mr. Mandelis (OTE chairman 1985-1988, General Secretary of the Ministry of Industry 1993-1997 and the Ministry of Transport 1997-2000) is charged with approving of the “programmatic agreements 8002” that OTE submitted, without checking the market prices, thus endangering the public interest.

“The screening of the 8002 Programmatic Agreement was a mandatory action for Mr. Mandelis… The failure of his supervision may be linked to the process whereby 250.000 euros were transferred to his account… It is clear that those funds come from “Siemens black funds”…

Mr. Alogoskoufis (Minister of Economy and Finance 2004-2008): during his tenure “the Programmatic Agreement and other government agreements were continued regularly, without any further control of the prices and the terms in OTE, resulting in a premium of approximately 65%”.

“During his tenure as Minister, the Greek government suffered the greatest financial loss because he did not claim - as he should have - premiums from Siemens and the legitimate claims uncovered by the scandal, twice. The total property damage to which his failure to comply led to, amounts to approximately 286,154,918 euros”.

Mr. Markogiannakis (Deputy Minister of Public Order and Safety 2004-2006 and Deputy Interior Minister with responsibilities in matters of Public Order 2009), inter alia:

“Despite the negative reports after the testing of the C4I system, and without securing interoperability, he returned funds amounting to 11.158.065,14 euros, even though the system was inappropriate for the intended conventional use… As a deputy prime Minister and Minister, he did not manage carefully and diligently public property that was entrusted to him and that both SAIC and SIEMENS took advantage of… Since the C4I system was never received, the financial loss of the Greek government is at least 254.999.999 euros, the total price of the contract”.

Concerning Mr. Tsohatzopoulis, inter alia, focus is placed on the deposition of R. Sikatzek Siekaczel, Munich’s public prosecutor, and investigators Zagorianou and Athanasiou, to whom he mentioned that “he delivered 10 million euros to Gebauer and Psarros, both of whom were SIEMENS executives, as a commission for the Patriot missiles contract. Also emphasised is the fact that “Rainer Niedl, another member of SIEMENS, also mentions this in his statement". Niedl added: "At that time, the Armed Forces project was proceeding. It was not an official SIEMENS product, but the local company wanted to get the project, and Siekaczel supported that attempt. In order to secure the contract, the Army wanted to be bribed”.

“It is speculated that crime of passive bribery was committed around the year 1998 by the then Minister, since it is unknown if the bribe refers to a political entity or army official”, concludes the PASOK proposal.