FT this week again visited the unending legal woes of Greece’s former statistician, a week after he was slapped with a suspended two-year sentence for failing to convene a board meeting in 2010 ahead of confirming statistical figures for the previous year’s memorandum-causing 2009 primary budget deficit.
In an opinion piece titled “A legal farce calls Greek reform into question”, FT stresses that “…after years of punishing austerity, Greece finally has grounds to hope it will regain its financial independence when its bailout programme ends next summer. The economy has returned to modest growth.
Against expectations, Athens has hit its fiscal targets and secured a pledge of further debt relief from creditors. Yet despite the huge efforts made to put the public finances on a more sustainable trajectory, there remain serious doubts over the government’s commitment to reform the Greek state, rid institutions of political influence and guarantee the rule of law.”
The international financial daily takes its cue from the misdemeanor conviction of US-based technocrat Andreas Georgiou, who headed up Greece’s national statistical authority (EL.STAT), from 2010 to 2015.
A handful of prosecutors in Greece since 2015 have had Georgiou brought up, often on appeal, on the charges of “breaching his duties”.
FT continues:
“Mr Georgiou has for six years been fighting accusations that, as head of Elstat, the statistical agency, he inflated Greece’s 2009 budget deficit, forcing the country to undergo deeper austerity. No matter that he had been acquitted of these charges a few months earlier, only to have the case reopened. No matter that the EU’s statisticians — whose standards he was supposed to be following — have endorsed both the procedures he followed and the figures he produced, describing last week’s trial as a “preset farce”. Mr Georgiou — a former IMF official and thus part of a hated international technocracy — is a convenient scapegoat for the failures of Greece’s political class. The case is exposing the limits of the EU’s influence.
Ensuring Elstat’s independence is in theory a condition of the bailout. European finance ministers had urged Athens to “solve” the issue. The Greek judiciary has responded by suggesting that Mr Georgiou’s conviction is proof of their own independence from external meddling. This is cynical, to say the least. The unusual decision to revive charges against Mr Georgiou after an acquittal looks more like a concerted attempt to whitewash the Karamanlis government of 2004-09, which presided over the worst excesses of over-borrowing while fiddling the figures.
The hard-left government of Alexis Tsipras is widely believed to have an understanding with Karamanlis supporters. Nor is it the only recent instance of charges being reopened in a politically sensitive case. The Supreme Court has revived charges against Gikas Hardouvelis, a former finance minister who had been acquitted of failing to declare his wealth correctly. It has similarly called into question the acquittal of Katerina Savvaidou, a former head of the independent revenue office, who was dismissed and accused of undue leniency in collecting corporate taxes.
Political interference in the judiciary, and in other purportedly independent institutions, would hardly be a new phenomenon in Greece. But the election of the radical Syriza movement should have been an opportunity to break the cosy links between political parties and the state. Instead, Syriza seems to be building its own patronage networks and displaying increasingly authoritarian leanings. This presents a challenge for the EU, which is already struggling to hold Poland’s government to account for its erosion of judicial independence. The real loser, though, will be Greece. Investors want assurance that they can enforce contracts in the courts.
Greece already sits at a lowly 133 in the World Bank’s rankings on this issue. Growing doubts over the rule of law will damage efforts to restore their confidence. Greek citizens have suffered enormous hardship in the effort to restore public finances. The country’s tentative recovery will last only if economic reform is accompanied by lasting change in political culture.”
