Word: pasok
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...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...
...more to be revealed -- by one man in particular. Given his central role in the affair, Koskotas' version of the dirty dealings could prove to be an imperfect account. Apparently nothing will be resolved until the public has weighed his tale. "At this point," says a frustrated former PASOK member, "we are all waiting to hear what Koskotas...
...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...
...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...
Support for PASOK, which won 46% of the vote in the 1985 national election, has plunged to 20% in Athens, half the popularity base of New Democracy, the rightist opposition party. Predicts Gerassimos Arsenis, a former PASOK economic minister: "This is the end of Papandreou. The recent scandals have finally helped to demythicize...