Top Greek treasury official accused of breach of faith
A senior official of the General Accounting Office alleged to have issued 94 million euros’ worth of state guarantees to dozens of entrepreneurs is to face an investigating magistrate on criminal charges of breach of faith.
The high-ranking treasury official is said to have issued the guarantees to a total of 57 entrepreneurs, all based in northern Greece, over the past decade.
She is said to have exploited a law passed in 2006 which allows the Greek state to provide state guarantees to help struggling businesses but only subject to very strict conditions.
One of those conditions is that any applications must gain the approval of an 11-member council.
That was not the case with any of the guarantees allegedly provided by the General Accounting Office official who, according to sources, approved each of the applications within 30 days herself without consulting the 11-member committee at all.
The 57 entrepreneurs implicated in the affair face charges as moral accomplices.
The investigation into reports of alleged illicit practices at the General Accounting Office was ordered by the experienced financial prosecutor Panayiotis Athanasiou, who has been overseeing the probe into the so-called Lagarde list of Greeks with Swiss bank accounts, and was carried out by deputy prosecutor Eleni Michalopoulou.
