The following article is a follow-up to the article HellasFrappe posted several days ago titled: "GAME OVER - The REAL Greek Deficit of 2009 Was Only 3.9% of GDP!" with detailed information about the actual deficit of 2009. (Click here to read oart 1 if this story)
Professor of Applied Econometrics and Productivity at the University of Macedonia –Economic and Social Sciences, as well as Ex-Member of the Hellenic Statistics Authority (ELSTAT) Approved by the Greek Parliament Mrs. Zoe Georganta has already publicly accused former Economy and Finance minister George Papakonstantinou of purposely “falsifying” Greece’s deficit in 2009.
Over the past year, she has maintained that the revision that was made on the deficit specifically included expenditures from public utility companies and general government spending, and she has stressed that some of these public utilities companies are now included in the personnel redundancy programme applied via the labour reserve measure. She notes that this method is in total CONFLICT with the Eurostat practices.
Georganta has also emphasized that the Greek deficit for 2009 was deliberately estimated at 15.4% from Eurostat (with the help of Papakonstantinou) because they wanted 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 severe austerity measures that the government wanted to impose on the country. And (that is why) Eurostat presented it at 15,4%“. (Click here to read that story)
On March 6 of this year, a mega bomb exploded in parliament which in normal circumstances would sent the head of the Greek Statistics Authority (ELSTAT) Andreas Georgiou, straight to jail. Officials who were probing the scandal that Georganta is referring to surfaced an email showing that Georgiou asked IMF officials to intervene and pressure the Greek government to change the law on ELSTAT’s operating methods because he was having difficulty getting board members to cooperate.
The ELSTAT chief, who was hand selected by George Papakonstantinou was called to give evidence to financial prosecutor Grigoris Peponis (otherwise known as one of the dynamic duo) in connection to the claims made by Georganta and another senior ELSTAT official that he purposely falsified and inflated the 2009 deficit figure to justify the austerity measures that were adopted for Greece as part of the bailout packages.
Georgiou, who took over at ELSTAT in the summer of 2010, denies any wrongdoing and told Peponis that Eurostat had been expressing concern about the accuracy of Greek statistics for some time before he assumed the position, while he also said that Eurostat officials visited Greece 10 times between 2009 and 2010 to check on the procedures being practised.
As you will see in the document below, Mr. Georgiou does not sound that "innocent" The only thing that is troubling is that the Greek media spoke about a possible judicial criminal court prosecution in July and we are at the end of September and nothing has happened yet... Nonetheless, and for the record, here is Zoe Georgantas' pdf file on Georgiou.
The Chairman of ELSTAT, Mr. A. Georgiou, under imminent prosecution for possible fraud with the Greek Statistics
The chairman of ELSTAT (The Hellenic Statistics Authority), Mr. A. Georgiou, is shortly expected to receive a judicial criminal court prosecution, according to a wide circulation newspaper, “TO VIMA” in Greek “TO BHMA”, which last Sunday (1st of July 2012 ), wrote the following:
The Public Prosecutors in charge “have detected official-duty liability of Mr. Georgiou for unlawful decision making and despotic-autocratic predisposition in the way he functioned as he ignored systematically and practically abolishing the (7-member) administrative Body of the Authority during the period of the contentious issue of preparing the official figures of the public deficit for the year 2009 with the aim of reporting to Eurostat.
Mr. Georgiou is also reviewed as criminally under a required investigation for violating the legal incompatibility which is attached to the position of chairmanship in ELSTAT when he assumed his duty on the 2nd of August 2010, in view of the fact that he did not resign – as he should have done – from his post in IMF, where he served for 21 continuous years. He preferred to remain at his post at the IMF on leave without a salary”
The newspaper is also saying the following: “Strong arguments have taken place in the immediate past between Mr. Georgiou and the Board of ELSTAT members, like the vice- chairman Mr. Nicolas Logothetis and the members of the Board Mrs. Zoe Georganta and Mr. Konstantine Skordas (the newspaper has put his Christian name wrong as Athanasios), who have argued that there was no objective measurement before reclassifying the public enterprises (the so called DEKO in Greek) from the institutional sector of Nonfinancial Corporations to the institutional sector of General Government, thus leading to a hastened and improvised figure for the public deficit.”
The newspaper goes on as “The Hellenic Statistics Authority was constituted in order to replace the sinful National Statistical Service of Greece (NSSG). However, its initial form was gradually mutated to become – according to official prosecutors in charge – “one man’s authority”. Within only two years, its initial statistical law was four times modified so that the role of the chairman could be more and more strengthened. These changes in the initial law were related to a “suspicious” atmosphere, as Mr. Georgiou was a fellow-pupil/student, with one year difference, of the ex Minister of Finance Mr. George Papakonstantinou. This fact was corroborated by the methodical handling of third parties who seem to have found a line of communication with Mr. Georgiou. So much the ex colleague of Mr. Georgiou at IMF and one of the troika representatives, Mr. Poul Thomsen, as well as officials of the EU, like the General Director of Eurostat Mr. Walter Rademacher and the Resident Representative of Eurostat at ELSTAT Mr. Halgrimur Snorrason, seem intervening to Mr. Papakonstantinou asking for the modification of the initial statistical law in order to strengthen Mr. Georgiou’s position.
Indicative of the marginalization of the rest of the members of the Board are the following: The Board members were getting informed about the official reports to Eurostat through the TV; the abolishment of the obligatory by law minimum number of meetings of the Board once a month; the order of Mr. Georgiou to the ELSTAT personnel to keep the members of the Board to quarantine even for very narrowly defined duties; the move and replacement of the Director of National Accounts, Mr. Nicolas Stroblos, who was at that post for 21 years.”
I must note that the journalist, Mrs. Eleutheria Kollia, who wrote the above report, has added certain misleading or ironical (I cannot say) – by my opinion – features in her writing: For example, she put as the title of her article the following:
Well, for the information of those who will read this announcement, I would like to report the following:
In his speech while presenting Mr. Georgiou to the ELSTAT personnel, on the 2nd of August 2010, the ex-Minister of Finance, Mr. George Papakonstantinou, said the following, which has been officially recorded:
Well, as it is now known,
- Mr. Georgiou did not resign from the IMF (as he should have done by law)
- Both Mr. Georgiou and Mr. Papakonstantinou have lied
- Mr. Georgiou is now getting his pension from the IMF plus a salary of 7500 euros per month from the ELSTAT budget, plus he has illegally a public servant as driver for his expensive car which has been paid by the Greek state (again illegally), plus an expensive cellular phone charged to the Greek state, who knows by how much.
Zoe Georganta
Source - http://zoe-georganta.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Prosecution-of-the-Chairman-of-ELSTAT3.pdf
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