Handelsblatt picked up on a pro-government weekly’s front-page scrutiny of Bank of Greece (BoG) Gov. Yannis Stournaras last Sunday, reminding of the latter’s past and very public fallout with the current leftist-rightist coalition government and Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras himself.
In a report from Athens entitled “The troublesome banker”, the German financial daily cited the claims by the weekly, “Documento”, namely, that Stournaras failed to property list a large pool at his Syros island vacation home when he was the finance minister between 2012 and 2014. He served in a coalition government headed up by Antonis Samaras.
“The governor of the Bank of Greece is a person who voices inconvenient warnings. There is practically no public appearance where he (Stournaras) is not reprimanding the government of Alexis Tsipras. He asks for greater determination in implementing structural reforms, and pressures for a rapid completion of negotiations with the institutions (creditors),” Handelsblatt notes, while adding that the Greek central banker has been on the receiving end of attacks by government ministers.
“A newspaper which backs the (Tsipras) government pointed to irregularities in his listing (on an obligatory means and assets statement) of a vacation home on Syros,” the financial daily writes, before reminding of Stournaras’ categorical denial of the claim against him.
“An old clash is rekindled. The leftist populist Tsipras has been at odds with the central banker for quite some time, when the latter was finance minister in the previous (up until January 2015) government. The clash for power climaxed in September 2016 when central bank auditors detected serious irregularities in a local bank (i.e. non-systemic Attica Bank), including, among others, the granting of a loan to a pro-government businessman (Christos Kalogritsas),” Handelsblatt states.
