The general secretary for industry at the Development Ministry, Spyros Efstathopoulos, has resigned.

Efstathopoulos announced on Monday that he was quitting his position after charges of breach of duty were levelled against former managers at the Public Power Corporation.

He is the third government official to resign in three days over the affair.

The head of Greece's privatization fund, Takis Athanasopoulos, and the Finance Ministry's general secretary Giorgos Mergos resigned on Saturday.

Their resignations came after ex-PPC managers were charged on Friday for commissioning in 2007 the Aliveri power plant, which lost the company about 100 million euros.

Mergos, Athanasopoulos and Eftsthopoulos served on PPC's board at the time. The men said they were resigning for ethical reasons, pending the court case.

Christina Papaconstantinou, until now the general secretary of fiscal policy at the Finance Ministry, took over Mergos's position.

A new candidate to take over as head of the Hellenic Republic Asset Development Fund's (HRADF), known as TAIPED in Greek, is to be proposed for approval by Parliament's institutions and transparency committee in the next few days.