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To give you some idea about the scale of the fraud involved. Pension funds in Greece were forced to participate despite the objections of their managers. Unlike the banks they were offered no recapitalization as a carrot. So i.e. the Journalists' pension fund went form a 2 billion in savings to 700 million Euros overnight. But furthermore the Bank of Greece which is managing the accounts of many if not most public institutions did something unprecedented. They took the money not only from the savings accounts but even from the current accounts of Hospitals, Universities, Public Authorities (the Pharmaceutical Regulatory Agency among others), bought government bonds without informing anyone from these institutions, and then pretty much decimated these accounts to the point that they were unable to pay bills and salaries... Interestingly a few weeks before the PSI took effect, the then Finance Minister (and now PASOK leader) Evangelos Venizelos, passed a law (hidden in some other bill) which gave immunity from prosecution to all BoG employees involved in managing public institutions' assets.

The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom - William Blake
by talos (mihalis at gmail dot com) on Tue May 1st, 2012 at 07:01:36 AM EST
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