PASOK leader Evangelos Venizelos and former Finance Minister Giorgos Papaconstantinou exchanged accusations on Frirday as the latter came under scrutiny after it was revealed that the names of three of his relatives had been missing from the so-called Lagarde list of Greek depositors that prosecutors had been examining.

Venizelos responded to the news by ousting Papaconstantinou, a close associate of former party chief George Papandreou, from PASOK. In a statement, PASOK appeared to accept the suggestion that Papaconstantinou had doctored the original list, which the former minister vehemently denied.

“There is a major issue regarding the responsibility of Giorgos Papaconstantinou since he is the one who handled the issue in the worst possible way and after two years declared he had lost the original CD,” PASOK said in its statement.

Papaconstantinou responded by casting doubt over Venizelos’s role and indirectly accusing his predecessor as finance minister of framing him. “If the list has been doctored... justice has to immediately investigate who had the motive to doctor it so heavy-handedly with the aim of incriminating me,” he said,

“Also, the question of why the investigation I had ordered into the names on the Lagarde list stopped as soon as I left office must be answered.”