Brussels, 23/01/2013 (Agence Europe) - On Wednesday 23 January 2013, the European Commission confirmed the accuracy of the Greek deficit figures for 2009, which had been suspected of having been overblown to legitimise the austerity package imposed by the country's lenders.
On Tuesday evening, court cases were opened against three officials at the country's statistics office, Elstat. Zoe Georganta, a former Elstat employee, has accused Andreas Georgious and two other managers of insisting that the debts of Greek public companies be added to the figure, taking the deficit from 12.5% to 15.4%. Georganta says that, had immediate measures been taken, the real deficit could easily have been brought down to 10% or lower. These accusations date back to 2011, and were repeated on Greek radio by Georganta on Tuesday. At the time, she only hinted at possible involvement of the Papandreou, saying this was due to inexperience or clumsiness, but in this latest radio interview she said that the government had approved the exaggeration. PASOK, the Socialist party of former Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou, issued a press release stating that the claims were a conspiracy theory.
At a higher level, the European statistics office, Eurostat, may be hit by some of the fall-out from the scandal because it endorsed the Greek deficit figures for 2009. Georganta accuses Eurostat of shutting its eyes to the process. In Brussels, Emer Traynor, a European Commission spokesperson, said that Eurostat had made it clear that the 2009 deficit figures supplied by Elstat were reliable and that the Greek figures followed all applicable European rules. According to AFP, public prosecutors are reported to have found signs of wrongdoing and have called for the investigators to be sought. Georgious has denied the accusations and has no intention of resigning. (EL/transl.fl)