Panos Kammenos: Time To End The Omerta (VIDEO)

In a revealing interview with the news site koutipandoras.gr and investigative reporter Costas Vaksevanis, independent MP Panos Kammenos explained why he is pressing ahead with the accusations he has publicly made against former premier and leader of PASOK George Papandreou. He said that George Papakostantinou (who was the Minister of Economy at the time) and other members of his circle presided over the sale of a 1.3 billion dollar credit default swap contract (CDS on Greek sovereign debt) in December 2009, a little after he came into power after toppling conservative premier Costas Karamanlis. The 1.3 billion US worth of insurance was at the time protecting against a Greek default and was bought during the spring and summer of the same year, by the state Hellenic Postbank (TT Bank) Today, this insurance is worth some 26 billion Euros which is a significant amount to put against spiralling debt management. But the government is no longer in possession of this 26 billion Euros of CDS because it was sold for  a minimal profit just after it was purchased. A Swiss-based wealth-mamagement company that was set up in the same year titled IJ Partners apparently bought the insurance. So what was once public money now mysteriously became private money. And there are some disturbing names among the officers and clients of IJ Partners. The firm, based in Geneva, has a number of well-known Greeks serving as either managing partners or members of the board, including former IMF economist Miranda Xafa (who inter mediated Greece’s dealings with the IMF) – a former CEO of Piraeus Bank….one of the banks named in a law suit for secretly shorting Greek state bonds during the same period, oh... and Theodore Margellos, who was accused of falsely baptizing imported corn from Yugoslavia as Greek produce in order to absorb state subsidies. Then we have IJ’s Vice President, Mr. Jose-Maria-Figueres, who shares board membership of a separate private company with  the Prime Minister’s own brother Andreas Papandreou Jr. It does not take a rocket scientist to put two and two together. Let us take it step by step. When the Hellenic Postbank of Greece (or the TTBank) sold the CDSs to IJ, George Papandreou was already secretly negotiating with the International Monetary Fund about a possible bailout as revealed by Dominique Strauss Khan himself in a televised interview in France. "We were working underground" said the former IMF head. The interview was of course ignored in Greece, until comedian Lakis Lazopoulos presented it on his show.