A tale of waste and corruption
The tale of Olympic Airlines’ bankruptcy looks like a minor offense compared to that of the national railway organization OSE, a ticking bomb in the Greek economy, which had amassed a debt of 7 billion euros by 2007 and is expected to owe up to 12.5 billion euros by 2010. Furthermore, according to government officials, the European Union has ordered that OSE’s debt be paid from state coffers. In 2007 alone, the OSE group posted earnings of 100 million euros and losses of 900 million euros. And, as if this weren’t enough, it has announced an investment program for infrastructure and network improvements worth 11 billion euros to run over the next 10 years. In his proposals to the prime minister, Transport Minister Costis Hatzidakis called for the need to cut back OSE’s investments and staff (by at least 3,000 employees), the utlization of property assets, and reorganization of its debt and administration. Moreover, and this was not mentioned in the proposal, there is also a need to crack down on bad management and corruption, both of which appear to be rife within the company.
