Katseli speaks to prosecutors
Former Economy Minister Louka Katseli on Monday testified for three hours before prosecutors probing claims by Panayiotis Roumeliotis, Greece?s ex-envoy to the International Monetary Fund, that the country?s foreign bailout was bound to fail.
Katseli reportedly said that Fund officials had not made such claims officially. She added that, as a minister, she had only had private meetings with Roumeliotis and had not had talks with IMF officials or the then chief of the Fund, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, whose contacts were with the prime minister at that time, George Papandreou.
Katseli added that she had expressed concern about ?Greece?s systemic debt crisis,? noting that ?violent austerity? could not be applied without reduced borrowing costs and growth measures. Prosecutors are to summon on Tuesday another former PASOK minister, Gerasimos Arsenis, who is Katseli?s husband, before calling ex-minister Vasso Papandreou and former government officials Giorgos Zanias and Petros Christodoulou.
