How is this possible, Greece?
The Greek ELSTAT saga has taken yet another turn, which should be a cause for grave concern in any European country: a unanimous acquittal by three judges of the Greek Appeals Court in the case of former head of ELSTAT Andreas Georgiou has been annulled. This was announced Sunday December 18 – the case was up in court December 6 – but no documents have been published so far, another worrying aspect.
The acquittal was the fourth attempt to acquit Gergiou – and this is now the fourth attempt to thwart the course of Greek justice and revive the unfounded charges against him. The intriguing thing to note here is that the acquittal was annulled by a prosecutor at the First Instance Court, who in September brought a whole new case regarding the debt and deficit statistics from 2010 and ELSTAT staff role here, this time not only accusing ELSTAT staff of wrongdoing but also staff from Eurostat and the IMF; a case still versing in the Greek justice system.
All of this rotates around the fact that ELSTAT, and now Eurostat and IMF staff, is being prosecuted for producing correct statistics after more than a decade of fraudulent reporting by Greek authorities.
It beggars belief that the justice system in Greece seems to be wholly under the power of political forces who try as best they can to avoid owning up to earlier misdeeds. In spite of acquittals, those who corrected the fraudulent statistics are being prosecuted relentlessly while nothing is done to explain what went on during the time of the fraudulent reporting. It should also be noted that in order to stop the ELSTAT prosecutions completely, four other cases related to this one, need to be stopped.
The ELSTAT staff is here reliving the horrors of the Lernaen Hydra in Greek mythology. Georgiou and his colleagues have had international support but that doesn’t deter Greek authorities from something that certainly looks like a total abuse of justice. How is it possible to time and again take up a case where those charged have already been acquitted?
Icelog has followed the ELSTAT saga, see here for earlier blogs, explaining the facts of this sad saga.
Follow me on Twitter for running updates.
There are several versions of the Lernaen Hydra myth, but all of them involve somehow cauterizing each neck so that it can’t grow a couple of new heads back. The value of allegory or metaphor is that often you can find a solution in the metaphor. I don’t know enough to do that? Does the metaphor suggest any strategy to you for cauterizing the necks of each head that is lopped off?
Cougar Brenneman
20 Dec 16 at 10:55 am
Just read the explanation given by Yannis Varoufakis in a French text:
http://www.les-crises.fr/grece-les-banques-sont-a-lorigine-de-la-crise-par-eric-toussaint/
Rough summary: in order to disguise the appalling state of Greek banks and European consorts Statistics were fiddled so it looked like it was the Greek state finances which were going south. Money was lent to the Greek state at a price so the European banks could be made whole.
Yanis Varoufakis dénonce à sa manière la supercherie : « La Grèce n’a jamais été renflouée. Pas plus que les autres porcs de l’Europe – les PIIGS, comme on a désigné collectivement le Portugal, l’Irlande, l’Italie, la Grèce et l’Espagne. Les renflouements de la Grèce, puis de l’Irlande, puis du Portugal, puis de l’Espagne ont été d’abord et avant tout des plans de sauvetage des banques françaises et allemandes. » (…) « Le problème était que la chancelière Merkel et le président Sarkozy ne pouvaient pas imaginer de revenir devant leur parlement demander encore de l’argent pour leurs copains banquiers, donc ils ont opté pour la meilleure solution de second choix : ils ont sollicité leur parlement en invoquant l’admirable principe de solidarité avec la Grèce, puis avec l’Irlande, puis avec le Portugal, et enfin avec l’Espagne. »
Goupil
3 Jan 17 at 10:46 am
I discovered a video of the Greek Debt Crisis Conference, which was convened by Sen. Bernie Sanders,that offers some insight into the Greek situation. This conference included a panel of economists including Joseph Stiglitz, Stephanie Kelton, James Galbraith and Jacob Kirkegaard to discuss the debt crisis in Greece. It’s over 98 minutes long, but it’s pretty detailed in its analysis.
https://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/video-audio/greek-debt-crisis-conference
Cougar Brenneman
4 Feb 17 at 5:05 am
[…] the wholly unfounded criminal cases against former head of ELSTAT Andreas Georgiou. As expressed earlier on Icelog, the ELSTAT saga is a test if Greece is beholden to a corrupt past or trying to amend its […]
Greece – still failing the ELSTAT test at Sigrún Davíðsdóttir's Icelog
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