Former finance minister Gikas Hardouvelis was unanimously acquitted – for a second time in the same case – this week on charges of failing to submit a mandatory statement of means and assets covering a period (2011-12) when he served as an adviser to then prime minister Loukas Papademos.
The exact offense was missing a deadline for the statement’s submission, an ubiquitous obligation for office-holders in Greece and appointees to top state positions, among others.
Hardouvelis came under sustained attacks by opposition parties and a portion of the press prior to January 2015, when radical leftist SYRIZA rode to power with a convincing election victory. At the time he was sharply criticized as a protagonist in the Samaras coalition government’s implementation of the second memorandum and what the political left in Greece considered as pro-austerity, pro-euro policies.
According to reports, he submitted the relevant statement for the fiscal years 2012 and 2013 in early April 2015, following press reports that a probe focusing on his actions was underway.
In both court cases, he insisted he was unaware that he was liable for submitting the statement due to his capacity as a salaried adviser to the prime minister. He had previously served as the head of the prime minister’s economic office when Costas Simitis was the premier up until the spring of 2004, when there was no legal obligation at the time.
