english.rfi.fr/economy/20100617-cost-corruption-high-greece Jon Henley finds nepotism, bribery and systemic low-level corruption are as much to blame for southern Europes crisis as anything else. In southern Italy and northern Greece, people didnt want to talk about the financial and economic crisis, the fate of the euro, debt-to-GDP ratios, credit downgrades or bailout. Many of them wanted to talk about the system. In Greece, an already unpopular government is detested with a dangerous passion (now in France, Spain, and Italy too). People, Gkelis said, have simply lost all trust, all belief. Theyre saying: No, enough. Were not going to give you any more, because you have failed utterly to do your job, the job we pay you to do, and now youre making us pay for it. “Politicians have made a lot of mistakes,” says Kelly Ariopoulou, 28, a waitress taking a break on a main shopping street in Athens. “Government and businessmen took all the money.” The Greek New Democracy party controlled Thessaloniki’s city hall for 24 years, holding the city hostage with its cronies. During the election campaign, the local archbishop refused to allow Boutaris to kiss the cross during mass, even imposing an excommunication of sorts on the candidate: As long as I am in office, you will not see the inside of city hall. A television crew recorded the incident, and when the footage was aired even conservative citizens were outraged over the archbishops audacity. People wanted change. They realized that things couldnt go on that way, says Thessalonikis deputy mayor, Spiros Pengas. Under Boutariss predecessor, €51.4 million ($68.4 million) had suddenly and inexplicably disappeared from the city budget. No one knew what had happened to the money until Boutaris hired an outside independent auditing firm and uncovered a cesspool of bribes, kickbacks, cronyism, political contributions, and payoffs. Crazy things were going on here, like a system of fictitious overtime, says Kappas. Most city employees had accumulated hundreds of hours of overtime, but they had never documented the details. Now there is a cap on the number of possible overtime hours and how much employees can be paid for them. The success of the new rules is reflected in the citys expenditures, which dropped by 30 percent in 2011. The budget deficit, which normally doubled every year, shrank for the first time -- by 7.5 percent. The time of politicians empty promises and irresponsible actions, have to come to an end. And the Mayor of Tessaloniki shows it can be done, it just takes someone willing to take a stand against the greed, corruption, and Zionist global agenda now revealed. Yiannis Boutaris, 71, is the mayor of Greece’s second largest city, Thessaloniki. The widely praised politician is actually a vintner by trade. His Xinomavro, Syrah and Merlot wines have won gold medals in international competitions. He turned over his vineyard to his three children when he decided, a few years ago, to devote his full attention to the city. In 2005 he established the Initiative for Thessaloniki, a sort of citizens association. He began cycling through the city as part of a campaign for more public transportation and better upkeep of public spaces. He has been the mayor since January 2011 and is not affiliated with any party, although the center-left Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) supported him in the election. He has a lizard tattooed on the back of his hand, a creature whose habit of molting was meant to remind him that change is in the nature of things. Perhaps it is the constant view of the gecko on his hand that motivates him to take on issues that others have given up as hopeless long ago. The LA Times reported last year that tens of millions of dollars in public funding for nongovernmental aid organizations is under scrutiny in Greece after the arrest of the head of a mine-clearing organization accused of embezzling $12.4 million, Greek authorities say. Three civil servants could also face charges after an unprecedented audit of the Foreign Ministrys overseas development program. The program, known as Hellenic Aid, dispensed about $160 million to more than 400 nongovernmental organizations — including Greek Orthodox religious groups and the International Mining Initiative — over a 12-year period ending in 2012. But an audit showed that $40 million could not be accounted for. It was a game of kleptocracy, said Nikolaos Matsis, a career diplomat and former deputy director of Hellenic Aid, the only whistle-blower in the case to speak publicly. There was no real oversight of NGO funding, he said in an interview. Instead, the [Hellenic Aid] committee would meet, approve expenses and funding reports — many of them bogus — and then, once the files were signed and sealed, all supporting documents were shredded — immediately. The Finance Ministry announced last month that in the first wave of inspections, 908 of them were being audited on suspicion of misusing funds. Former socialist Prime Minister George Papandreou authorized at least $550,000 in government aid to an NGO founded by his mother, a longtime womens rights activist. A 13-page audit report makes no criminal allegations but does document gross mismanagement of state funds, a criminal offense for amounts exceeding $275,000, Leandros Rakintzis, Greeces auditor general said. Former Defense Minister Akis Tsochatzopoulos was convicted last year of multiple counts of fraud and money laundering. He was given a 20-year prison sentence for his involvement in a scheme in which several of his relatives and business associates pocketed large sums of money from arms purchases conducted during his 1996-2001 tenure. George Papaconstantinou, a London-trained economist whom Papandreou elevated to the post of finance minister and who became the face of modernized fiscal policies and corruption crackdowns, was indicted by Parliament last year over the deletion of his relatives names from a list of suspected tax cheats. A key figure in the Foreign Ministry scandal is another Papandreou protege, Tanzanian-born Alex Rondos, who acted as the prime ministers chief Balkans advisor and directed Hellenic Aid from 2000 to 04, when NGOs, including the International Mining Initiative, were funded. The head of the demining organization, journalist Konstantinos Tzevelekos, was arrested and jailed Feb. 18, 2014 on suspicion of fraud and money laundering. Auditors and police investigators said the group, which was founded in 2000 to clear land mines in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Lebanon and Iraq, did not provide valid progress reports on its work. According to a 20,000-page police report, the organization also prevented inspections by Greek Embassy officials in nations where it was working. The groups expenses were only partially checked, even as its funding increased from $336,000 in 2000 to $6.1 million in 2004. It remains unclear how much of the money was used to clear mines. What we do know, said a police official with knowledge of the investigation, is that much of that money was used to purchase prime real estate in Athens and the holiday island of Rhodes. The same heinous corruption, cronyism, cover ups, bribes, kickbacks, and Zionist agenda is assaulting America and WE have to make it stop: “They’re involved in kidnapping kids, international drug trafficking. They’re assassinating people. It is the story of a cancer at the heart of America and its continuing cover-up at the highest level!” - Retired FBI Chief Ted Gunderson. “There is no free press, the Constitution is not being followed, and the rights of people are not being protected. Overall, corruption is rampant. I don’t want to say that the USA is an ‘evil empire’, but I’m asking for protection from the evil that’s stalking me.” ~ U.S. Marine Patrick Downey has asked President Putin for asylum after he uncovered and exposed the U.S. government and banks were both arming and funding both sides of the conflict he was sent to fight in. “And everything you thought you knew to be true-the rule of law, the sanctity of the of the family, the belief that government was there to nurture your brood-all turned out to be a lie.” ~ Tom Ball and now my children and I uncovered the same intolerable evil. It has already declared war on all of us, EVERY American, taxpayer, military person, home, property, bank account, and the U.S. Constitution we should all hold more precious than life itself. “Do I mean conspiracy? Yes I do. I am convinced there is such a plot, international in scope, generations old in planning, and incredibly evil in intent. ~U.S. Congressman Larry P. McDonald. The Greek government has again announced further cuts in public sector salaries and pensions, under pressure from the European Union and the IMF. Joseph E. Stiglitz, former chief economist and senior vice-president at the World Bank has stated the purpose of the fund (IMF) is no longer valid and “it is reflecting the interests and ideology of the Western financial community. Joseph Stiglitz is a professor at Columbia University. He is a recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (2001) and the John Bates Clark Medal (1979). He is a former senior vice president and chief economist of the World Bank, and is a former member, and Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers. Stiglitz has over 40 honorary doctorates and at least eight honorary professorships, as well as an honorary deanship. He is the 4th most influential economist in the world today based on academic citations, and in 2011 he was named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world. Greece and all other countries being victimized by the same greed, corruption, and assault by the Zionist global agenda now revealed, need to take notice: “We believe that these (IMF forced austerity) measures … are driving the economy into a recession,” argues Ilias Vretakkos, vice-president of Adedy, one of Greece’s two major trade unions, which represents public sector workers. He blames this crisis on the government and the financial markets. “The European Union and the Greek government have tried through this economic crisis to help the credit problem that was created by the banks, by taking from the people and giving it to the banks.” America did the same and so have many other countries around the globe. Iceland being the exception which jailed the bankers, cancelled mortgages, and Ecuador which cancelled 7 billion USD of World Bank loans all-together while capping payments at 20% of the country’s GDP with the other 80% reinvested back into the country and the people of Ecuador.
Posted on: Mon, 26 Jan 2015 06:17:52 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015