The Greek Parliament on Monday night decided to vote in favor and send George Papakonstantinou to stand trial for breach of trust, doctoring an official document and dereliction of duty.
Out of the 283 MPs present, a total 269 valid votes were cast, while there were nine invalid votes and five blank votes.
On the charge of falsifying a document, 166 MPs voted in favour of indictment, 34 voted against and 67 abstained.
For the charge of breach of faith, 206 MPs voted in favour, 42 voted against and 18 abstained.
For the charge of dereliction of duty, 220 MPs voted in favour, 35 against and 11 abstained.
The case will now be referred to a five-member council of judges, which will decide whether there are grounds for the three charges against the former minister. The members of this council will be selected within the week through a draw conducted by the Parliament plenum, from the lists sent by the country's supreme administrative court, the Council of State, and the Greek Supreme Court (Areios Pagos).
In his address just before the controversial vote, the former finance minister under the George Papandreou government insisted that the allegations against him were groundless and politically motivated.
“They had found the scapegoat, all they needed to find was what allegations they would force upon him” he claimed, often with a trembling voice.Papakonstantinou (rightfully) launched an attack against Deputy Prime Minister Evangelos Venizelos, his own leader when he was at PASOK, saying that unlike himself, Venizelos did nothing to investigate the list. He even left it to be understood that he felt betrayed by him, noting in Latin: “Hail Caesar, those who are about to die, salute you”.
“I am the target for one and simple reason, because I am the finance minister who put the country in the bailout process,” he said.
Papakonstantinou was found guilty of tampering with the scandalous “Lagarde list” that apparently contains the names of more than 2,000 Greek citizens with (suspicious) accounts at a Geneva branch of the HSBC, including four of his relatives.
On Monday financial prosecutor Panayiotis Athanasiou recommended that two former heads of the Financial Crimes Squad (SDOE), also be charged with breach of trust in connection with the list. Specifically, Athanasiou recommended that the former heads of SDOE Yiannis Diotis and Yiannis Kapeleris, be charged with breach of trust in connection with the controversial list. At the same time he called for charges to be dropped against Diotis’s former aide Galateia Mane.
The case file was forwarded to an investigating magistrate.
Papakonstantinou will now face the Special Court for two felonies and one misdemeanor, or specifically for misconduct, infidelity and the falsification of an official document.
Looking beyond the story as presented by the mainstream news, one should also realize that hidden in the background -or behind the case of Papakonstantinou- is also an acquittal of George Papandreou, who knew everything about the Lagarde list as did the the current leader of PASOK Evangelos Venizelos.
Showing that he was fully aware of the legal predicament by saying inter alia that "the findings (of the probes) propose my referral to the Special Court with heavy charges, which entail years of imprisonment."
With this in mind, he once again denied all charges and underlined that he has never distorted any documents and/or conducted any misconduct.
Papakonstantinou even argued that his case was similar to that of the late Andreas Papandreou in 1989, and even with Abdullah Ocalan, and while ending his speech he said in a trembling voice that he did not benefit from this story, on the contrary he noted, he has many debts.
"I am not to blame for all the ills of the nation. It is unfair to wash the sins of many governments, of both parties, on my back. It is dishonest."The indictment of Papakonstantinou, who undoubtedly has enormous responsibilities in this scandalous case, simply reminds us how corrupt and distraught the whole political system is in Greece. In our opinion it is this very "system" that manipulated a situation in order to acquit George Papandreou, and their pet Evangelos Venizelos.
Both these men have great responsibilities in this case as well, but they also have friends in high places which have allowed them to spin a tight and protective web around them making themselves untouchable. The very same "system", or the friends of Papandreou and Venizelos, also used Antonis Samaras as a crutch to save their boys. Indeed they handed over Papakonstantinou, in an attempt to make us believe that they were actualy vying for transparency, but they did this now and only after milking him for all his worth.
In any case, George Papakonstantino will be the first politician after the late Andreas Papandreou, Menio Koutsogiorga, Dimitri Tsovola, Panagiotis Roumeliotis and George Petsos who will face a Special Court. Let us hope he begins talking....
(The 'Lagarde list' was an electronic file sent to the Greek finance ministry by French authorities, containing the names of Greeks with sizeable deposits in the Geneva-based branch of HSBC, which was received when Papakonstantinou was finance minister. This list disappeared and only resurfaced after several months, without any action to follow up the information it contained. Further investigation showed that the copies in the hands of Greek authorities had been tampered with and some names removed, including depositors that were first cousins with Papakonstantinou.)
*Editor's Note - If Papandreou and Venizelos believe that they got away with it... Then they better think again. Licking the cracks of the 1% does not gain you a lifetime of immunity. They will squeeze them dry, as they did Papakonstantinou, and then they will toss them away much in the same way. And if that doesn't happen, which it will, then both Venizelos and Papandreou will have to also face the wrath of the people, which might even prove to be worse. We bet that when this finally happens, because it will, they will even envy Papakonstantinou who will be safe in his jail cell next to all the other good boys of PASOK such as Akis Tsochatzopoulos. Yup, the PASOK party and three decades of scandals... it ain't no technological breakdown... it is time for them to pay! This my friends is the the road to hell....
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