Courtroom at the Aeropag. Image: W. Aswestopoulos
The Greek Judiciary Targeted by the Press and Politicians
In the wake of the conviction of Andreas Georgiou, the former head of ElStat, the statistics agency created with him as its founding director in 2010, numerous press reports have been circulating at home and abroad that portray the judiciary as being controlled by the government.
Time wonders if Georgiou has been too honest. Georgiou was convicted of violating the official structures of the independent authority, and not because of the 2009 deficit figures, which were repeatedly denounced as false by leading politicians in Greece.
A closer look shows that the judiciary is rather independent of the government, but obviously judges with criteria that are not always comprehensible to all observers. In Greece, Nea Dimokratia and the government alternately accuse the opposing side of unauthorized criticism and influence on the judiciary.
The Georgiou case
It is prudent to discuss whether the prosecution for the comparatively minor official offense had taken place when Georgiou had run up the 2009 deficit to the exorbitant figure of 15.4 and later 15.6 percent of the gross domestic product.
This was done by including all identifiable debt and expenditure values of the entire state, the civil service and hospitals, as well as public enterprises with state participation. The underlying calculation methods were fully compliant with the rules, even if they were not applied in the same form in all euro countries at the time. This is also underlined by the current statement of the Greek Minister of Finance Euklid Tsakalotos. Tsakalotos does not doubt Georgiou’s statistics.
Georgiou’s condemnation hardly helps the current government of Greece. Finally, the prosecution will be used by the EU Commission and the Eurogroup as a point of reference for criticism and severity against Greece, which in any case can no longer act sovereignly from a financial point of view. In fact, only former Prime Minister Kostas Karamanlis could still find pleasure in condemning the man who so ruthlessly exposed the inadequacies of his policies.
In 2008, the finance minister of the latter had predicted a deficit of only two percent of GDP in the budget for 2009. On 30. In March 2009, its Secretary of State Antonis Bezas had already admitted that he was trying to limit the deficit to 3.7 percent of GDP. In the dialogue that followed the move to the International Monetary Fund and the European bailout fund, it was former PASOK Finance Minister Georgios Papakonstantinou and his Nea Dimokratia predecessor Giannis Papathanasiou who argued openly about the exact size of the deficit.
Georgiou, according to the expertise of his then colleague at ElStat, Zoe Georganda, increased the 2009 deficit by 17.753 billion euros by including state-controlled operations such as the Athens metro, the post office and the railroads. Georganda comes without these operations and with a different accounting of the hospital debt for 2009 only to a deficit of 3.8 percent.
As recently as September 2016, Papathanasiou argued, on the occasion of the then-current criminal prosecution against Georgiou, that the blowing up of the deficit he postulated was not Georgiou’s own doing but a political decision by then-Prime Minister Giorgos Papandreou. Papathanasiou pointed out that in France, for the deficit calculation, social security spending was omitted, and in Germany, hospital spending was omitted.
Georgiou and Georganta had several disputes during their time at ElStat. Georganda accuses Georgiou of having put Greece’s statistics in chains with its lenders, and that former Finance Minister Papaconstantinou had permanently destroyed the country’s credit-worthiness by repeatedly complaining in advance about an exploding public deficit. In conclusion, the question of which came first, the state bankruptcy or the credit imbalance, could only be clarified by a complete legal reappraisal procedure against all those involved in the responsible governments.
Papaconstantinou was convicted in Greece of manipulating the so-called Lagarde list of potential tax sinners in favor of a close relative, the court said in its verdict. The members of the Nea Dimokratia government, which drove up the national debt from 2004 to 2009, have not yet been sentenced in this respect.
Former ministers of Karamanlis’ previous government, the Costas Simitis cabinet that brought about the introduction of the euro, were convicted of money laundering or are still in the status of defendants. This concerns former Defense and Interior Minister Akis Tsochatzopoulos, who has since been freed on health grounds, Communications and Transport Minister Tassos Mantelis, who has been sentenced to a preservation order, and accused Yannos Papantoniou, who served as Defense and Finance Minister.
Papathanasiou continues to declare himself a member of Nea Dimokratia. At his book presentation in Thessaloniki in May, his former boss, Karamanlis, honored him with his presence.
Prime Minister will not be prosecuted
It is striking that the prime ministers responsible for their cabinets, Simitis, Karamanlis, and Papandreou, have never been called to testify. Simitis, whose party secretary Tsoukatos received an undeclared donation of millions from a large German electronics company for PASOK, has so far only commented on corruption in interviews. He described it as a social phenomenon.
The judiciary is powerless because the Greek government is amnestied from any prosecution of official misconduct after two sessions of parliament. Corresponding misconduct is not judged by ordinary courts, but only by special parliamentary courts. In order for such a procedure to take place, an investigating prosecutor must submit the indictment to the Parliamentary Prasidium in due time and the latter must ask the Plenum for a decision within the time limit set by the Constitution. Otherwise, the government member’s crime is considered irrelevant and, consequently, may not even be mentioned without fear of a libel suit.
The fact that the time of the two session periods is usually not sufficient to open a procedure in time is a problem of Greek politics. However, the catch can only be reformed on certain dates and is therefore currently untouchable.
Regardless of the truth of the allegations of statistical manipulation against Georgiou, the same chain of reasoning, which is supposed to show government interference in the judiciary, could just as easily point to the fact that the majority of senior judges and prosecutors were appointed by the two operating governments. The typical question of who benefits from the ruling cannot be answered unequivocally, despite all the criticism of the government that is justified in other places.
The Neue Zuricher Zeitung registers this fact, at least with regard to the attitude of the opposition in its criticism of the Greek justice system. The condemnation of Georgiou for the statistics, which, contrary to reports to the contrary, never took place, is more in line with the argumentation of Nea Dimokratia, which in turn accuses PASOK and SYRIZA of having ruined the state.
It would certainly be better for the reputation of the Tsipras government, which is becoming increasingly unpopular among the people, if the real culprits of the country’s debt were brought to justice, and not, as in the Georgiou case, the bearers of bad news. This has tended to calm popular anger.