Word: papandreou
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...scandal has scorched the Socialist Party (PASOK), and public cynicism has increasingly focused on the party's leader, Papandreou himself. The Prime Minister last September was already the target of snickering and outrage as he conducted a highly public extramarital liaison with airline flight steward Dimitra Liani, 34. As the parliamentary investigations dug through testimony, the question loomed: Was the Prime Minister aware of the crime all along...
...Papandreou has not testified before investigators, though he 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...
...talk. His chief motivation, he explains, is a fear that once extradited to Greece he will disappear behind bars -- or be murdered and declared a suicide and thus be unable to present his own version of what happened. He figures his fate in Greece will be worse if Papandreou remains in power; so his motive for speaking may also be to wound the government...
...Koskotas accusations are extraordinary, though difficult to verify. In six lengthy prison interviews with TIME, the banker describes a 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...
...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 straight to the politicians, he says. In addition, protected and encouraged by Papandreou, Koskotas secretly plowed Bank of Crete funds into his magazines and newspapers...