In the Sunday edition of RealNews, an article titled "Look at all these coincidences..." analyzes this scandal and begins to explore how " Kyriakos Griveas and members of the Papandreou are interconnected.
(Just a reminder: Kyriakos Griveas -who was arrested- and his wife Anastasia Vatsika -who is still wanted by authorities- are shareholders of C&C International Α.Ε. - a company that is involved in marketting and the organization of conferences.)
The article points to the following:
- - the joint organization (between Griveas and the Papandreou family) of several conferences on "green" development sponsored by the Hellenic Postbank.
- - Andreas Papandreou's non-governmental organization (NGO) and three firms belonging to Griveas were established in the same law firm in Switzerland!
- - the participation of the former President of Costa Rica, Figuera in A. Papandreou's NGO as well as on the Board of IJ Partners, (yes the same company that benefited millions of Euros from the CDS that was sold from the Hellenic Postbank)!
- - rental property in Thessaloniki, that belongs to relatives of A.Papandreou from the Hellenic Postbank!
Quite a few coincidences don't you think?
It would be nice to see what the Papandreou family has to say about all of this evidence, but as always they will brush it off as just another conspiracy story. They best get prepared though, the pieces of the puzzle are coming together and we are now starting to understand why, when and where.
So what are the facts?
We already know that Griveas was an associate of Andreas Papandreou in C&C International co NGO I4CENSE. In other words the brother of George Papandreou, Andreas, confessed during a recent court case against Independant Greek Leader Panos Kammenos that he was the president and founder of a company that benefited millions from the sale of a CDS that was sold from the Hellenic Postbank. Some may recall the infamous CDS scandal which HellasFrappe featured in 2011 and which spoke about the period right after the 2009 elections (specifically after December 2009), as well as the selling of the CDS from the Hellenic Postbank which led Greece into bankruptcy and into the arms of the IMF (and Troika).
Let us repeat: The brother of the former prime minister of Greece was involved in a company that bet on the failure of the Greek economy.
Did he receive any help to elevate the worth of this CDS from his brother? After all, families do aid each other in times of need. Common sense says heck yeah... but in this case we need facts. All we know is that right after George Papandreou came into power he began characterizing the Greek nation as a "corrupt country" on live television. Soon after this his finance minister George Papakonstantinou began to parallel the economy to a sinking "titanic". If someone wanted to hurt the economy, and allow the markets to play with the spreads at the time then this was a pretty good way to cause some damage. But like we said, there has to be more proof, that is why the charges from Kammenos were probably brushed off.
Let us not forget that the Papandreou family is protected by the 1% and whoever dares to ignore this, also gets himself or herself set up to be destroyed.
We here at HellasFrappe believe that needed more help, and this is where we believe the Bank of Greece came in. We also still believe in the accusations that were made by Panos Kammenos against GAP, who till this day charges that George Papandreou is solely responsible for the destruction of the Greek economy.
All one has to do is go over the news, day by day and week by week. What are the facts:
Well, a new figure emerged after PASOK came to power in November 2009, leading to panic on the markets, unsustainable high borrowing costs for Greece and, ultimately, the creation of the country’s emergency loan package.
New Democracy and the Communist Party (KKE) boycotted the committee which supposedly probed this case in parliament but this did not deter its members, who sent letters to former EU Economic Affairs Commissioner Joaquin Almunia and the director-general of the EU’s statistics agency, Eurostat, Walter Radermacher, to ask them to give evidence as part of the probe.
The second case involves the scandalous CDS bonds of TT bank. Leader of the independent Greeks party Panos Kammenos who said that George Papakostantinou and other members of the George Papandreou government presided over the sale of a 1.3 billion dollar credit default swap contract (CDS on Greek sovereign debt) in December 2009, just a little after PASOK 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 more than 26 billion Euros which is a significant amount to put against spiraling debt management. But the government is no longer in possession of this CDS because it was sold for a minimal profit just after it was purchased.
According to reports, a Swiss-based wealth-management 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 back in the late 80s under the Andreas Papandreou government. Then we also 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.
More facts:
Did the PASOK government deliberately inflate the national deficit? Well according to a Wikileaks cable it did! WikiLeaks which has continued to release millions of emails from the intelligence company Stratfor, apparently exposed an email by a Greek informant to Stratfor on the Greek deficit, claiming that the deficit was purposely increased by the Greek government in order to place the blame of the state of the economy on the previous government (of Costas Karamanlis)!
According to the article in the TA NEA newspaper, which was also announced on a Saturday morning news show on MEGA channel, the Greek informant (and former candidate with the PASOK party) said that there was a deliberate increase made to the Greek deficit by the PASOK government. The informant who went by the code name GR101 underlined that the Greek government deliberately exacerbated the problem of deficit in 2009 (so that it can purposely blame the previous government for the country's economic crisis so that it can receive a larger assistance ($$) from international agencies by simply making payment on debts earlier than necessary. "For example, payments that could have been made in January 2010, were paid in November or early December 2009 so that they can deliberately increase (the level of) government spending."
The Stratfor official noted that the informant of the email, which was sent on January 16, 2010, or informant GR101, is a lawyer who is active in Brussels, and added that his informant was very reliable and had very good contacts in the Greek government. The Stratfor official does point out however, that the allegations were termed as rumors by his informant.
What is interesting to note with this particular Stratfor email is that it was sent one week before Eurostat's report on the 2008 Greek statistics.
It should be reminded that the final figure of the deficit exceeded 15 percent of gross domestic product, whereas it had been projected to reach only a third of that.
So, George Papandreou and Papakonstantinou and who knows what other diabolical team methodically created a completely hostile climate for Greece on the international financial markets. Greek bond spreads went through the roof. And as if this was not enough, the Bank of Greece provided special opportunities for “naked short selling” of Greek government bonds, resulting in an overnight skyrocketing of the spreads from 150 to 450 basis points, as revealed by the newspaper “Eleftheros Typos. (Free Press)”
Can it be true? Was the Bank of Greece in on this, or did it have knowledge? Is it so desperate to collect money from the Greek people that it is now turning on its own because it realized that the Greek people have no more money?
Well, let us look at the facts because this is a very profound accusation. The facts are that when someone sells a bond on the market it passes through the Electronic Secondary Securities Market which is owned by the Bank of Greece. So the obvious statement would be how could they not have known? They obviously did!
The only thing we are convinced of is that the Bank of Greece opened a dangerous backdoor in the bond market. This loophole was able to create, in a crisis environment, a situation of undervaluing speculation on the Greek bonds market. Therefore, Mr. Provopoulos, head off the Bank of Greece, is absolutely responsible for this loophole and even though he was in the right about exposing the massive dealings of the Hellenic Postabank he cannot be looked at as a Saint when he had knowledge about this sort of wheeling and dealing now can he? If he did not understand the consequences of this loophole, he is incompetent but if he did then he is an accomplice to an atrocious crime and should be prosecuted.
(Between the both of us.. We highly doubt that he didn’t get it.. )
All we know is that there is no perfect crime, at some time or another a mistake is made, and when mistakes are made scandals are brought to the surface. Example: The selling of the CDS from the Hellenic Postbank to the company owned by the brother of the former Greek Prime Minister! Major boo-boo. We believe in the justice system and we hope that they will investigate this case through and through. We are also preparing ourselves for all the potential collateral damage surrounding this particular case because we are convinced that it is much larger than it seems.
We suggest that you also read:
1. Kammenos said that George Papandreou and members of his team, presided over the sale of 1.3 billion dollars worth of credit default swap contracts (CDS on Greek sovereign debt) on or around December of 2009, shortly after coming into power. The 1.3 billion dollars worth of insurance protecting against a Greek default was bought during the spring and summer of the same year, by the Hellenic Postbank, a public banking arm of the Greek government. It is unclear what the intentions of the Postbank were when it purchased the credit protection. Clearly, the previous government that was in power at the time (New Democracy or N.D.) understood that Greece headed towards a fiscal crisis, otherwise they would not have purchased the insurance. However, we do not know if the move was initially made with the intention of reaping private profit, or simply as a hedge by the government itself against it’s own default. Unfortunately it gets worse, around the time that the Hellenic Postbank of Greece sold the CDS in question, the Prime Minister’s office was consulting with the International Monetary Fund about how to proceed with the notorious 110 billion Greek bailout plans. News of these discussions had not yet become public, and the Prime Minister had yet to address parliament on the matter. In addition to this, credit markets had yet to uncover the extent of the impairment to Greece’s national balance sheet as the country’s bonds were still trading at below 200 basis points (spreads) from German bunds. In practical terms, this meant that anyone fortunate enough to have bought Greek CDS during this period would be in a position to make an absolute fortune. It also means that anyone who owned, or had a stake in Greek CDS stood to benefit directly from either a Greek default, or the perception that a default was increasingly possible, since this would drive up the price of credit protection, and thus the value of Greek CDS. Click here to read this story
2. The “suspicious” dealings of the I4cense institute “www.i4cense.org” –and the involvement of the brother of the Greek prime minister ‘Andreas Papandreou’ in this institute- has “somehow” gone unnoticed by the Greek mainstream media, but it made headlines in the Swiss daily "LaLiberte" The article entitled “Greek Salad" talks about a family business, its location and features a grand photo, of none other, than Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou. Click here for that story.
3. When Giannoulas asked Papandreou what his plans were for the Greek debt crisis… Papandreou said Greece lacked of competitiveness, and this could be dealt with through modernization, including moving toward a green economy. He noted that Greece was made more vulnerable to the global financial crisis because its banks had invested heavily in the Balkans… (Ah ha!… So the Greek crisis was not the fault of the former Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis it was/is a "global crisis" because Greek greedy bankers lost a lot of their money in the Balkans... Keep in mind that the loans from Postabank were being sent to the Balkans to be washed... and then sent back to Greece clean ) Click here to read that story
4. George Trangas is back and he has pulled out all the stops by revealing some damaging information on George Papandreou, and his predecessor Costas Simitis. After speaking about the Greek debt, and explaining why we should proclaim it as odious he also commented on some remarks that were made by publisher Stavros Psycharis. The latter is the President of the Lambrakis Publishing Group (DOL) which publishes many Athens newspapers including the long-standing journal "To Vima". Slamming Papandreou, Trangas asked what do private jets and corn have in common with one another? -Remember Margelos and the corn?- Then he asked what does a lavish apartment in Knightsbridge have to do with all of this as well? (Knightsbridge is a London district that is home to some of the world's most wealthiest people, and has some of the highest property prices in the world. In 2006, a four bedroom apartment in this area sold for over £25,000,000, and according to Wikipedia street car parking spaces sell for £300,000 on a 94 year lease! This area is so exclusive that the principal landowners in the area are the Duke of Westminster and Earl Cadogan!). Is it true that Papandreou got an apartment here and if yes... how did he achieve that? Click here to read this story
5. On November 6, 2011 Kammenos had said in Parliament that George Papandreou "staged" the announcement of the referendum and mentioned that the following day billions of dollars/euros were lost on the international markets. Kammenos, revealed that the failed Belgian bank DEXIA, in collaboration with his brother Andreas Papandreou and the company that Andreas worked for called UNIGESTION, placed a huge bet on the fluctuation of Euro/Swedish Krona several days before George Papandreou announced the referendum! In Parliament he gave details on how it was purchased by associates of the Greek Prime Minister as well as how it was used in bets on the collapse of the Greek economy, which at the time was worth BILLIONS Euros! Click here to read this story.
6. Officials are concerned over a peculiar news report that was published in "TA NEA" newspaper on Tuesday claiming that the US strategic and intelligence group STRATFOR – or “the shadow CIA“- was monitoring Greek economic affairs ten months before our country sought economic aid from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and several months before George Papandreou began having private tet-a-tet talks with former IMF head Dominique Strauss-Khan. The news was apparently leaked by WikiLeaks, and said to be part of the more than five million communication e-mails that were conducted by STRATFOR employees and their informants in various countries around the world. Click here to read this story
Signed
HellasFrappe Team