THE PLOT THICKENS - Yiannos Papantoniou To Also Be Probed For Defense Procurements (VIDEO)

 

Following a report in the weekend edition of Real News, a Greek prosecutor launched an investigation into claims that some 12 military helicopters were purchased at an inflated price in 2003 when Yiannos Papantoniou was defense minister (under the PASOK government of Costas Simitis). According to Real News, the State agreed to buy the Apache aircraft from Boeing for approximately 593 million dollars though the final price was 663 million Euros as the purchase was made via a swap agreement arranged by Germany's Deutsche Bank.

The prosecutor is now going to determine whether or not the 70-million-dollar difference was kept by the bank as commission.

(My... my...)

The report in Real News also revealed that the Greek state paid roughly 40 percent of the purchase price in 2004, not 2007 as had been agreed.

Just recently, the parliamentary committee responsible for probing politicians’ origin of wealth forms (the otherwise known “pothen esches”) had announced that it had requested auditors to carefully look into Papantoniou’s records after a prosecutor told the panel that the name of the Papantoniou’s wife was on the controversial Lagarde List with large deposits at the Geneva branch of HSBC.