SPECIAL REPORT - Venizelos Exposes Papandreou's Lust For Luxury

Supporters of George Papandreou and supporters of Evangelos Venizelos are at war. The first group is openly challenging Venizelos' leadership in the party, while the second group is stepping up the pace in the same mud-slinging game.

In such a framework, and following the scandalous reports about auditors discovering a 100+ million Euro "black hole" in the PASOK party’s finances, its leader leader Evangelos Venizelos on Tuesday met with his predecessor George Papandreou in order to discuss the issue. (in other words to get some answers). And even though Papandreou attempted to downplay the issue in front of the press, the issue became the number one talked about story of the day because quite simply it is not a private affair, and cannot be presented as an inner party rift, it is an issue that concerns public funds (or tax payer euros) and therefore Papandreou needs to produce answers (or at least receipts).

The newspaper Efimerida ton Syntakton said last week that Venizelos had appointed five accounting firms (Grant Thornton, Ernst & Young, KPMG, Deloitte & Touche and PWC Greece) to audit the party, whose debts stand at whopping 114 million Euros. The same daily said that their report would show that millions had been spent between 2007 and 2010, when Papandreou headed the party, without any records being kept.

This puts PASOK in an extremely difficult position, since it borrowed approximately 116.5 million Euros between 2003 and 2011, while its state funding steadily decreased.

And all this, while cracking down on tax evaders and "corrupt" Greeks (as Papandreou has said).

Even though some of Papandreou's followers attempted to downplay the news by claiming that the sum is due to a typographical error on Tuesday, no one really bought into it. The only reason that they said this is because they know that this whole issue will have grave repercussions on the party which has lost more than 75 percent of its popularity with Greek voters.

It is pretty clear cut. The audit cannot be contradicted and Papandreou's claim that everyone is out to get him, and/or discredit him, is not going to cut it either. The 100+ million that was given to PASOK is not from private funds, but is public money and as such requires the relevant receipts. Therefore Papandreou needs to come clean, stop playing the victim and produce those damn receipts.

But will he? Highly doubtful that is why it is very likely that the Greek justice system will interfere. And the reason we believe this here at HellasFrappe is because on Tuesday there was a report on the olympia news site where several prosecutors issued a statement noting that "the man who forced us to send laborers to jail for pending debts, directly contributed to a colossal fraud case!"

"This case cannot be filed in a drawer, no one will dare to do so, we will crush whoever does this ourselves" they added.

And it makes perfect sense.

Papandreou once characterized an entire population as "corrupt" and while he was saying that he was having a party with millions of tax-payer Euros!

Meanwhile, supporters of Venizelos, who want to come across as the good guys leaked some incredible information to the press. The info included astronomical amounts that were spent during Papandreou's rule. For instance, on a trip to Costa Rica last year -that lasted less than five days- (and as President of the Socialist International) Papandreou spent 200,000 Euros!

There was also talk about a note that was sent to PASOK cadre Nikos Athanassakis. Word has it that he was ordered to"bring back the 300,000".

One after another all the PASOK MPs who once hastened to be photographed next to Papandreou are now running like headless chickens and claiming that they did not know anything.

The issue cannot be ignored. There are too many questions that have surfaced because of Papandreou's lavish lifestyle. For instance, why did Papandreou and his select few (known as the gardeners) always choose to travel on VIP flights? How could they publicly talk about austerity to the Greek people, sign a Memorandum that sent the Greek economy 30 years backwards and then spend 200,000 Euros on a tropical island in Central America in less than five days?

But if you think that is a ridiculous sum, oh boy are you in for a treat. In 2010 when Greece was led to the Memorandum, Papandreou, and some of his "gardeners" (including George Papakostantinou who is already being investigated for his mishandling of the Lagarde List) spent a whopping 6,000,000 Euros for VIP flights!

Yes you read correctly, 6 MILLION in flights! Apparently in this period the EMBRAER 209 VIP jet conducted 41 flights, or over 230 hours of flight time and cost 1.6 million, while the GULFSTREAM VIP jet made 36 flights with 310 hours of flight time and cost 2 million and finally the LEGACY VIP jet performed 43 flights or 272 hours of flight time and cost 1.9 million.

The Papandreou government's lust for "opulence" even commissioned helicopters to conduct their day to day chores. As sad and as ridiculous as this may sound, the same reports revealed that Theodore Pangalos commissioned a helicopter to fly to the island of Kea (where he has a summer home) in order to water his vineyards!!!!

Specifically, the Augusta B-212 helicopter conducted two flights, or four hours of flight time, at a cost of 20.522 Euros! (In other words, every time Pangalos watered his vineyards, we the taxpayers would pay the helicopter thousands of Euros!) It gets better, the VIP SUPER PUMA flew 12 times or 47 hours, and cost 251,884 Euros and the CHINOOK (CH-47D) made two flights or 7 hours, which costing 40,164 Euros!

The arrogance of these politicians, who literally destroyed this once prosperous nation, is so great that while they were in government they would also command the crew of the aircraft to pick them up from the Eleftherios Venizelos airport because they were too lazy to commute to Elefsina (where the helicopters are stationed)!

Another good example is at the EU Summit on October 26, 2011 in Brussels. Papandreou who was still prime minister then, and Venizelos (who was minister of finance) each travelled separately to the same destination, on two separate VIP planes, for the same purpose, and on the same date!

The situation got so out of hand, that George Papakostantinou even used the presidential plane to travel to Rome in December 2010 for a funeral!

Why?

Because this is how PASOK has operated all these years. But when conservatives dared to make these sort of accusations in the past, they would characterize it as propaganda and lies. Now that PASOK is slinging mud at the other half of PASOK it doesn't look like its lies anymore; now does it?

Papandreou needs to come clean, and as we said earlier, stop playing the victim. He might be travelling the world pretending to be a lecturer, or educating young wanna-be's on how to destroy a nation at some US university, but he cannot erase the crime, so he must now produce those receipts or get set to do the time!

HellasFrappe

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