Papakonstantinou to take stand on Thursday in Lagarde case

Former Finance Minister George Papakonstantinou is scheduled to take the stand on Thursday at 15:00 at the Special Court, where he will be called to answer questions regarding his handling of the Lagarde list scandal case. Papakonstantinou, who has rejected the charges that were brought against him, is charged of tampering with a public document and attempted breach of trust. He is also charged with violating a law related to fraud against the state.

So far a total of 16 people have testified in this trial which began on February 25, including three former SDOE chiefs, former associates of Papakonstantinou as well as PASOK leader Evangelos Venizelos, and other officials.

It should be reminded that the Lagarde scandal involves Greek large-scale depositors in a Swiss branch of HSBC who are suspected of tax evasion.

Most of the trial's time was taken up by the testimony of a Hellenic Police department of criminal research Apostolos Deltsidis, testifying on the technical aspects of how the archives on a CD, transferred to a USB stick, could be opened and how the users of the files could be traced electronically. The files were projected onto a screen earlier this week and it was discovered that in one copy's case the names of Papakonstantinou's relatives were missing while in another copy, from a second original requested after the first was lost, there were two names related to him.