New crucial round for EL.STAT. and debt

The parliamentary inquiry committee investigating the case of EL.STAT. is going through the last critical turns that lead to the final stretch, as next Tuesday will see Manolis Kontopirakis' testimony, the president of the statistical office during the ND administration, while next week - which is the last - will bring the testimonies of ministers including George Papakonstantinou, the maneuvers of which - as Finance minister - are the main subject of the investigation.
 
It is noted that the material collected so far by the committee is overwhelmingly against Papakonstantinou and the head of EL.STAT., Andreas Georgiou.
 
This is why PASOK and the former Finance minister are anxiously awaiting Kontopirakis' arrival in parliament as they believe that with this particular witness they will be able to allay the negative impressions and transfer the sole responsibility of the gigantic deficit which led the country to the IMF, to the ND side.
 
According to information, however, Kontopirakis seems determined to provide the committee members with documents that "burn" his successor, which have not been published until now.
  
The “hot” mail
 
Furthermore, there is concern among members about a series of e-mails from the president of EL.STAT., Andreas Georgiou, a favorite of Papakonstantinou's, which reveal two catalytic aspects of the case:

- guidance from senior Eurostat executives in order to increase the debt with spending that was not required
- machinations to silence and expel those in EL.STAT. that realised what was going on

In particular, on 8.10.2010 the president of Eurostat Walter Radermacher sent an email to Georgiou about the Goldman Sachs swaps. The text describes in detail the Eurostat proposal for a quantitative upward revision of the Greek debt and therefore the deficit for each year from 2001 onwards. Radermacher's letter was preceded by Papakonstantinou’s to Olli Rehn on the same topic.
 
The heads of Eurostat insisted on including in a similar manner the calculation of the deficit and the expenses of 17 SOEs. Eventually Georgiou accepted the EU demands without resistance, although most European countries do not include similar elements in the calculations of their national expenditure.
 
In contrast, several members of EL.STAT., including the then vice president Nikos Logothetis, realizing the adverse consequences of such a methodology for our country, attempted to restrain their supervisor and inform their political superiors, i.e. Papaconstantinou.
 
What did they manage? What followed, reflected in Georgiou's electronic correspondence, is indicative. In detail, after the proposal by Georgiou, Snorrason as the “link” between Eurostat and EL.STAT. sends an advisory letter on 11.10.2010 with all the changes of the founding act of ELSTAT to tackle the responsibilities of all personnel other than the president’s. That is, the smart way to get rid of the annoying presence of all those who wanted to record the real picture of the deficit. After 5 days Georgiou sent another letter to the head of the Troika, Poul Thomsen, in order to highlight the urgent need to change the EL.STAT. code of operation.
 
The request to Thomsen for an intervention
 
Essentially the president of the Statistical Authority asked indirectly for the intervention of Thomsen in order to accept without change the proposed amendment of the law to get rid of some members such as Zoe Georganta and Nikos Logothetis.
 
It is noteworthy that these specific members have accused Georgiou and Papakonstantinou of purposefully enhancing the deficit in order to facilitate the entry of the country to the IMF.

Georgiou begins with «Dear Poul ...», and among other things says: "The proposed amendment must be passed as soon as possible, because each passing day the situation keeps getting worse. There is a risk of a change in the proposed amendment (if the government promotes it), for the sake of compromise, and in this case the situation will remain critical and dysfunctional, something we cannot afford at present."
 
Eventually the law was passed in the following weeks…