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| English: Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou on official visit with United States President William J. Clinton, Washington, April 1994. Courtesy White House Photo Office Ελληνικά: Ο Ανδρέας Παπανδρέου με τον Μπίλ Κλίντον κατά τη διάρκεια επίσκεψης στις ΗΠΑ, 1994. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
The catalyst that accelerated the political death of Andreas Papandreou's and his PASOK party's popularity were the charges about his direct involvement in financial scandals. Election year 1989 brought a trying period for Papandreou: he was defeated at the polls, his health worsened and accusations about his involvement in financial and other scandals increased until he was formally charged with being responsible for widespread telephone tapping enacted by the state-controlled telephone company OTE, and for the embezzlement at the Bank of Crete.
"The Dirty .89" (or To Vromiko '89) literally began 23 years ago today, or on September 28, 1989, when the then leader of the PASOK party Andreas Papandreou was ordered to face criminal charges of influence peddling and accepting huge bribes at the head of a party that apparently gorged on corruption.
At the time and after two days of emotional debate, the Parliament accepted the findings of a probation commission that portrayed Papandreou as the willing accomplice of corrupt officials who conspired with a prominent banker to loot the state of more than $200 million US dollars, by a party line vote of 165 to 121.
The 12-member investigating commission concluded that Papandreou had accepted more than $700,000 in bribes as part of a $200-million embezzlement from the Bank of Crete. The bank's former owner, 34-year-old George Koskotas, was an overnight sensation in Greece and a prominent Papandreou supporter until the bottom dropped out of his financial empire last year. Koskotas fled, was arrested in the United States on a Greek fugitive warrant and then fought extradition from a Salem, Mass., jail cell.
Koskotas claimed Papandreou blackmailed him into embezzling millions by skimming interest to state enterprises with large deposits in the Bank of Crete. He noted that money was used to finance Papandreou's failed bid for a third term.
Parliamentary investigators, who interviewed a dozen witnesses, including Koskotas, charged that Papandreou used his influence to direct state funds to deposit at the Bank of Crete. Papandreou was bribed to head off a central bank audit of Bank of Crete books, the investigators' report alleges.
Papandreou, a former economics professor at UC Berkeley, also is accused of accepting a bribe to arrange the vastly reduced payment of back taxes by a Greek businessman, thereby clearing the way for the businessman to sell an Athens hotel to Koskotas.
Parliament also voted to file charges against a former finance minister in a tax reduction case and against a former economics minister for allegedly being aware of ongoing scandals but failing to act against them. A former undersecretary of industry was also accused of accepting bribes to allow the illegal construction of facilities for a publishing empire that Koskotas also controlled.
At the same time, four of Papandreou's former ministers were also stripped of their legislative immunity and ordered to face charges. One, who had served as deputy prime minister and justice minister, was accused of accepting a $2-million US dollar bribe in the same banking scandal.
The action had been anticipated, nonetheless, the accusation of criminal misconduct by the late Papandreou and his ministers as well as the scale of corruption outlined in the parliamentary findings were unprecedented.
"I personally accept my share of political responsibility for the scandal. . . . The criminal side of the case does not touch me," Papandreou had said. "The accusations against me are the product of the sick imagination of a fugitive swindler and all of those who are hiding behind him. During all my years of political life in Greece, never -but never- were my morals in doubt." But Papandreou's protestations made no impact on the 300 Greek MPs.
Nonetheless, and even though he was under a cloud of possible scandal and removed from power, Papandreou continued to dominate the Greek political stage.
Editor's Note - Fast forward to 2012, it is interesting to see that his son George Papandreou might soon be called to face criminal charges on how Greece resulted to the IMF, and if the parliamentary probe proves him guilty then he too will face this country's Highest Court just like his father did. As an old proverb says... "A nation that forgets its history is doomed to relive it again."
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