When questioned, Simitis said that he was not aware of anything about the illegal actions of the defendants and what is attributed to them.
"What I know comes from the newspapers and the courts” e said while he revealed that the KYSEA does not have any investigative powers, nor does it negotiate and discuss offset benefits.He said that weapons cannot be purchased unless a proposal is made by the Ministry of National Defense.
When asked whether bribery was possible in the KYSEA’s proceedings, the former Greek PM said that "if it happened, it is possible” and explained that the prices of military supplies and armaments are not known and are determined case-by-case.
He also said that he regretted the "these travesties" took place under his premiership when his efforts were to upgrade and modernize the country.
Certainly the most controversial part of his testimony was when he referred to the issue of Imia and said that the reason the helicopter crashed -killing three Greek soldiers- was because it was in the air for too long. Simitis explained how the crisis with Turkey at the time over the Imia Islets highlighted the need to update the Hellenic Armed forces, in order to counter a possible escalation.
It should be reminded that both Simitis and Venizelos were summoned by the courts at the request of Tsochatzopoulos since they were part of the Government Council for National Defense (KYSEA) during the critical period when the defective submarines and TOR M1 purchases were made (the KYSEA is the body with the highest authority on such matters). Other veteran PASOK ministers who were part of the KYSEA at the time include Vaso Papandreou and Yannos Papantoniou, -who are also set to testify on May20th.-
A week later, in the 27th of May, three high-ranking military officers that were also part of the KYSEA – Athanasios Tzoganis, Manolis Paragioudakis and Giorgos Ioannidis – are due to take the stand.
According to the former National Defense Minister, the controversial arms deals involves strategic government choices that were made by this controversial KYSEA and as such it was not possible to make illegal payments for legal and approved supply contacts. The courts argue that the trial aims to investigate the alleged bribery charge and not the legal status of the supply contracts. After all, KYSEA members have previously stated that the council decides on contracts based on the recommendations from the military and political leadership of the Ministry of National Defense.
Here are the transcripts according to TOC magazine:
Simitis: You will be asking why we gave those funds and why the procurements were necessary. You will remember that before I won the confidence vote, we did not have the means to intervene in the Imia case and the helicopter crashed and those kids were killed because it was flying for more hours than it should have. So when I asked the head of the Hellenic National Defense General Staff if commandos could retake the Imia [islets] he said no because they would have to go via Thessaloniki and it would take 6 hours for them to get there. I have written about it in our book. The then leadership of the Armed Forces told me that the difference between us and Turkey was great at the level of engagement and that we should have the ability, in the event of a clash to hold them until the allies could intervene. KYSEA therefore took the decision and we bought 60 F16s, 15 Mirages, 4 submarines, helicopters etc. At a diplomatic level the Helsinki decision was taken.
Judge: Let’s go to the decisions
‘Akis protested when I reduced the defense budget’
Simitis: That [Helsinki] decision was important because if it wanted to intervene as in Imia, Turkey would have to go to the International court beforehand. That meant that we didn’t need so many arms. So I called the governing committee and on the recommendation of the then Finance Minister, I recommended that new arms purchases be suspended and the budget be reduced by 1 trillion drachmas. Mr Tsochatzopoulos disagreed as he believed that improving the country’s defenses was important and [argued] that the arms programs did not exceed 5% of GDP and was only at 4%. I decided to the contrary and there were major protests from Mr Tsochatzopoulos and the press who wrote, “Arms or butter?” New Democracy also agreed with the press. Eventually KYSEA met and reduced the arms programs by 35 billion euros. That is, the arms procurement programs happened under the pressure of the Imia crisis and were reduced when the element of necessary defense improvements was no longer present.
Judge: Yes but that didn’t concern the previous contracts for the submarines and TOR M1s.
Simitis: Those were necessary due to Imia and were right to be purchased, so the assertion that they were not needed is false.
Judge: Does KYSEA (the Government Council of Foreign Affairs and Defense) have an advisory role?
Simitis: No. It has an executive role. It didn’t decide over everything. The law governing KYSEA says that it makes political decisions but not about the purchases. For example it would answer the political question: do we have the ability to purchase [arms] from France or the USA? That’s what it decides.
Simitis: KYSEA would receive the decisions of the committees, of the defense minister etc. KYSEA cannot purchase something that has not been recommended by the ministry. It either accepts what is said by the ministry or not. But it did not and cannot have an opinion on technical details, only general principles. For example the prime ministerial airplane was chosen between the Falcon which could go to China and the Embraer which was enough for Brussels which is what concerned us.
The KYSEA had a strategic role. Just think that in 8 years it met 44 times – i.e. relatively few, while the cabinet met 204 times.
Judge: Did you not audit the files? Could the minister change the supplier of the weapons?
Simitis: No but he could bring the case back to KYSEA and say that ‘I think this system is more useful’.
Could the Minister have been bribed?
Judge: Could the minister have been bribed?
Simitis: Since it happened, could it have happened?
Pagoropoulos (Tsochatzopoulos’s lawyer): That hasn’t been proven, that is what we are looking at
Simitis: It is worth asking, given there was so much background work, how [the bribery] could ultimately happen. But here you are not coming to buy an Opel car. It is auditable only by the Defense Committees. But here it appears (I won’t say that it has been proven and annoy the counsel), that there were payments at three levels: deputy director, general secretary and minister at the highest level, so given that they had colluded anything is possible.
Pagoropoulos: That hasn’t been established sir, that is what we are examining
Simitis: I learnt that two of the accused had confessed.
Judge: Don’t take anything as a given
Simitis: Indeed. Was it accepted that there were illegal payments? In 2001, 2, 3? No it was not accepted. It became accepted much later after trials abroad of companies and their employees.
Judge: We are looking to determine if that is true.
Simitis: It is true about the foreign trials.
Judge: How could there have been bribes when all of this was overseen by the KYSEA (the Government Council of Foreign Affairs and Defense)?
Simitis: I told you it did not examine prices. That is all done by the committees. A file comes with the recommendation of the Head of Arms and of course the ministers. So there is room for bribery before and afterwards.
Judge: Do you know if Mr Tsochatzopoulos was bribed?
Simitis: I don’t know, I told you, I don’t know anything…
Judge: Whichever witness is tired may sit.
Simitis: I am not tired
Akis’s recommendations were decisive
Prosecutor: Were Tsochatzopoulos’s recommendations of major importance?
Simitis: Of course, he was the Defense Minister
Prosecutor: Did his recommendations [carry more weight]?
Simitis: The weight of the recommendation depends on the reputation of the individual. KYSEA met 44 times. Long discussions were had about the submarines and repeatedly. The German submarines were decided on following the recommendation of the head of the navy. There was no one advising ‘these are faulty’ don’t buy them. I recall that for both issues we met more than once.
‘I trusted Akis’
(The former PM recalled that at the height of his power Akis Tsochatzopoulos was one of the most influential officials in PASOK and on the political scene in general, noting that he had even served as acting prime minister. As such he was trusted by Simitis.)
Simitis: I had faith in the system of the Defense Ministry. In any case the Defense Minister wasn’t just anyone, he had served as acting prime minister when Andreas Papandreou was ill. From ’76 he was PASOK’s secretary and for 20 plus years the number two person of PASOK.
TOR missiles and submarines
Simitis: For the TOR M: :With the TOM – M1 the only issue that was raised was their functionality, if they were compatible with other weapons as the Greek army did not purchase Russian weapons but it was decided that we should by Russian weapons for political reasons. The TORs were purchased for the army. If the recommendation was that the weapon wasn’t a good one, we wouldn’t have bought it. There were some weapons the Soviets had which others did not have.:
On the Submarines
“It is now 2015 and you can’t expect from me to remember the discussion we had in 1999 and 2001 in relation to the submarines or whatever other weapon system. The only goal of the government was for there to be co-production as the Saramanga shipyards were not operating and were making losses. KYSEA decided that it would be beneficial for there to be co-production.”
Editor's Note: Simitis of course forgets that during that period his rival, former leader of the New Democracy party Costas Karamanlis, continually slammed him for the corruption that was occurring during his time of rule, but all Simitis did -at the time- was challenge Karamanlis to take these cases to court. Karamanlis did, and almost 15 years later, the Greek court system is still battling to uncover the truth in these cases. Why? Think about it. The PASOK system, which some describe as being better than that of the Cosa Nostra, involved people from all walks of life in Greece. That is why the corruption continued for decades because it involved the neighbourhood baker, up to officials in the government. In simple terms, when you suddenly go from rags to riches like most people did who supported this party oer the past 30 years, it is very difficult to break that line of corruption. Karamanlis tried during his rule, but was overrun by all those who once hailed Costas Simitis. Sadly the methods that were used by this group which is still alive and kicking (media, finances, large corporations) is again being repeated by the SYRIZA party (or the old PASOK) which is presently appointing its members to high-ranking posts across the public sector. HellasFrappe highly doubts that we will ever have the pleasure of seeing authorities drag these characters off behind bars because the mechanism that supports this type of corruption would collapse.
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