Word: cretes
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...vehemently denies any involvement in what he calls a "conspiracy aiming to hurt Greece." But investigators have yet to hear from the central figure in the case, George Koskotas, 34, a onetime New York house painter who vaulted to power as the multimillionaire owner of the Bank of Crete. Now jailed in Massachusetts on a variety of charges leveled just before he fled Greece last November, Koskotas is facing extradition to answer accusations of looting his own bank...
...plump man with steady dark eyes and a soft voice, Koskotas is no common embezzler. In addition to the Bank of Crete, he owned Grammi, a flourishing publishing empire that operated five magazines, three newspapers and a radio station. He bankrolled big hotels. A year ago, he bought Greece's wildly popular soccer team, Olympiakos. He created one of the world's most advanced printing plants. And until he fled Greece, Koskotas consorted freely with the country's ruling Socialist leaders. At 34, George Koskotas, the Greek wunderkind, had achieved a dazzling reputation in his own land...
...Socialist government riddled by extortion and criminality. Koskotas charges that millions of dollars missing from his bank were actually payoffs that went directly to the head of the government, Andreas Papandreou, and PASOK officials. The Prime Minister, says the banker, personally authorized the plan to loot the Bank of Crete. Koskotas describes as well his own illegal complicity in the huge swindle, one that involves enormous sums hard to account for adequately...
...crooked money, PASOK leaders had for three years ordered state-managed corporations such as the Post Office, the Organization of Urban Transportation and the State Pharmaceutical Co. to transfer large bank deposits -- the country's money, in effect -- out of the big national banks into the Bank of Crete, then the / smallest private bank in the country. There, Koskotas says, he arranged for the government deposits to draw an exceptionally low rate of interest, only 2% or 3%. Bank savings accounts in Greece routinely draw 15% interest. The excess interest earned on the government deposits was siphoned off and went...
...past year, says Koskotas, some 40 shipments of money, in blue briefcases stuffed with 5,000-drachma notes, were carted out of the Bank of Crete and taken first to his own residence. There the banker handed the money over to a Papandreou confidant, Georgios Louvaris, who Koskotas says made the deliveries to the Prime Minister. Pickups occurred weekly and amounted over the year to more than 3 billion drachmas ($20 million at today's rates). In addition, Koskotas claims he personally carried a total of half a billion drachmas ($3.3 million) to the home of a Deputy Prime Minister...