Prime Minister Andonis Samaras invited the leader of Independent Greeks Party Panos Kammenos to take part in the new government, but the meeting was not fruitful. Nonetheless, both men are determined to investigate those responsible who led the country to the Memorandum and exploited Greece's positions for their own personal benefit.
According to reports, both Samaras and Kammenos agreed to create an investigative committee which will investigate how (and why) Greece was dragged into the arms of the Troika because it allegedly had a high deficit.
It must be reiterated that in mid September 2011 Professor at the University of Macedonia and committee member of the Greece’s National Statistical Service (ELSTAT) Zoe Georganta, outwardly accused Papakonstantinou of purposely “falsifying” the country’s deficit. Georganta said at the time that the final numbers that were presented by the government in 2010 (for the 2009 period) were known by Eurostat, which apparently also participated in this act of fraud as well.
From what she said, the Greek deficit for 2009 was deliberately estimated at 15.4% from Eurostat because they purposely inflated it to be larger than that of Ireland’s debt which was estimated at 14%. “The deficit was artificially inflated in 2009 to show that the country had the largest across Europe, including that of Ireland which was 14% in order to justify the harsh austerity measures the government wanted to implement on the country. And (that is why) Eurostat presented it at 15,4%“. Georganta has said that even a 0.05 percent difference in the deficit equals to billions of euros! She had also said at the time that they were warned her and her collegues to keep their “mouths shut” about this because the situation in Greece was crucial. (Click here to read that story)
Sources close to Samaras note that the prime minister is convinced that the second memorandum was mandatory, but he does not have the same opinion about the first memorandum which he believes could have been totally avoided. And this is because the manner in which we arrived at the first memorandum -which gave way for the mid-term agreement and then the second memorandum- is very shady and needs to be investigated.
In such a context, it is expected that several key political figures will be questioned such as George Papandreou, George Papakontantinou, Theodore Pangalos, etc.
Kammenos, who suffered some losses in the June 17 elections, told Samaras that he will support him on this issue and that he will also submit all the evidence he has on this case to the relevant committee.
This was perhaps the only point of consensus between both leaders and the only thing we can expect now is how this will be received from the other parties, especially PASOK leader Evangelos Venizelos. When you really think about it Venizelos has nothing to gain by supporting or "covering up" the crimes of his predecessor (as well as the other ministers that were involved in this case) but one must not hold their breath because with PASOK anything is possible. What he does have to take into consideration though is that his party only received 12% in Sunday's elections and with such a low figure he can't really expect "immunities" to kick in.
Reports said that the investigate committee will focus on three periods:
- -The first concerns the period between October 2009 until May 2010, when crimes were made on the relinquishment of loans on various funds (Samaras himself had spoken about a US fund that had offered 25 billion and which had never received a reply). The other loan that will be investigated is the alleged Russian loan, the terms of which were revealed to Samaras by Russian President Vladimir Putin himself.
- -The the parliamentary committee will then focus on the period between May-December 2010 when ELSTAT together with Eurostat produced a +15 deficit.
- -And finally the committee will investigate the first half of 2011, or until a reshuffle was held and Papakonstantinou was removed from the Ministry.
After the meeting, the leader of the Independent Greeks party said that "Samaras made a commitment to move ahead with this case, and we will support him."
Reference - defencenet