Word: pasok
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...plot was an audacious one. To create the pool of 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...
...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, Menios Koutsogiorgas. At the Bank of Crete half a dozen other PASOK leaders twice a month received briefcases filled with money totaling 1.5 billion drachmas ($10 million...
There was little danger of interference. Fifty different national audits of the Bank of Crete that might have uncovered the scheme were squelched over the years by PASOK officials, says Koskotas, twice by direct calls from Papandreou. In the summer of 1988, the government muscled through a special Secrecy Act that had the effect of guaranteeing its overdrawn banker financial confidentiality. Koskotas says he was directed to pay an additional $2 million to then Deputy Prime Minister Koutsogiorgas as a reward for managing the legislation...
...dank atmosphere that nurtured this tangle of alleged corruption began after the Socialists' re-election in 1985. Papandreou was eager to tighten his grip on the country. He found a perfect match in the ambitious young publisher and banker Koskotas, who saw in PASOK a means to build an empire...
...purchase at $9 million, Koskotas somehow produced a bankroll big enough to buy it. He knew exactly where he wanted to go. The Socialists were immersed in an election and Koskotas was determined to curry favor. Within a few months he hired as bank general manager a PASOK veteran, Panayotis Vakalis, whom he knew to be a longtime friend of Andreas Papandreou's. The connection eventually brought the young banker and the Prime Minister together. The great swindle was under...