Did Fraud Lead To Greek Crisis ???

On May 18, a new chapter was written in Greece’s economic odyssey, as the Greek parliament, with the votes of the SYRIZA and Independent Greeks coalition government, approved Greece’s fourth memorandum loan package since the onset of the country’s depression. The strings attached to this new deal with the “troika” of Greece’s lenders include 140 new austerity measures, including tax hikes and additional pension cuts.

This comes just weeks after the Greek government triumphantly announced the achievement of a 4.2-percent budget surplus for 2016, exceeding expectations. Greece is in the midst of its eighth full year of economic depression, a crisis that emerged in late 2009 when it was revealed that Greece’s deficit and debt figures were larger than had previously been publicized.

Was this really the case though? Several former board members of the Hellenic Statistical Authority (ELSTAT) have spoken publicly in recent years, revealing evidence that they argue proves that Greece’s debt and deficit figures were indeed falsified in 2009.

But the evidence provided by these whistleblowers shows that the figures were actually falsified in order to appear worse than they were in reality, providing the political impetus to bring Greece under the supervision of the “troika” (consisting of the IMF, European Commission, and European Central Bank) and leading to successive memorandum agreements and the enactment of strict austerity measures.

Further fueling these claims, former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn has publicly admitted that in April 2009 he met with George Papandreou, who was then campaigning in Greece on a platform of promises of new social services and benefits, claiming on the campaign trail that “we have money” for these programs.

Papandreou, who had not yet been elected, came to power following the Greek elections of Oct. 4, 2009. A few months later, the new government publicly announced that the deficit and debt figures for 2009 were higher than originally claimed by the outgoing government.

You can read the rest @
http://www.mintpressnews.com/whistleblower-greek-debt-crisis-manufactured-unscrupulous-accounting/228076/

This also may explain why Strauss-Kahn was set up in NYC and removed from his post. His successor happily participated in the assault on Greek finances.