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Saturday 14 July 2012

GREEK CRISIS - Berlin Still Doesn't Get It





Greece is preparing legal action against 10 high-ranking current and former executives of Siemens, the German electronics and engineering giant accused of bribing Greek politicians to secure state contracts, says Greek newspaper Kathimerini. The suits are expected to be lodged in September against at least 10 German executives including Reinhard Siekaczek, who was convicted in 2008 for administrating slush funds used to win contracts, and Michael Kutschenreuter, the ex-financial head of the company’s telecoms unit who was found guilty in April of breach of trust and abetting bribery after admitting to covering up the slush funds.

It is unclear whether the German executives will also face trial in Greece, where authorities have failed to try the ex-CEO of Siemens Hellas, Michalis Christoforakos, and Volker Jung, a former director of the company. A German court ruled in 2009 that Christoforakos could not be extradited to Greece for trial as he has German and Greek nationality.

Er…just run that last part across me again? I mean, WTF is that all about? Und Herr Jung – what of him? Does he have joint Somalian/Czech nationality? Will this get him off? We cannot possibly tell.

Meanwhile, Siemens continues to pitch for (and get) business from the Evangelos/Samaras Axis of Graft.

Sitting in Parliament and vaguely respectable these days, the Greek neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party has expanded its anti-immigrant campaign, and begun a drive to get Greeks to donate blood only for Greeks, outraging doctors and  health care officials who think this racist. Thus Germans who reject half-baked “pure” bloodline ideas have nevertheless allowed Berlin-am-Brussels to promote the ideas of Heinrich Himmler in Greece.

The International Monetary Fund has said that it has found policy delays in a number of areas in the country’s bailout program, but is open to ideas on how to reach the key objectives of the economic ‘reforms’…up to but not including the timings. The IMF made the comments after its inspectors completed initial talks with the new Athens government this week. The Troika mission will return to Greece on July 24 for more formal negotiations, said IMF spokesman Gerry Rice. “It is clear the economy is going through another difficult period,” he spotted, ” but clearly the important thing is to put the program fully back on track.”

Mr Rice is very probably mad.

Meanwhile, Greece is said to be performing better ‘as regards its ability to absorb EU structural funds’, a euphemism for the money not always reaching its intended beneficiaries. Says a hitherto reliable Athens source, “No wonder the economy is going through a difficult period. As long as corrupt officials and others at all levels have their snouts in the trough it will not get better and the money will never all or even partially reach the intended beneficiaries.”

So to sum up then, corrupt German industry continues to rip the Greeks off, Berlin-inspired austerity is nurturing the rise of nationalism, the IMF still thinks the Greek economy can get back on track with no let-up in Berlin-inspired hair shirt, and the fatties in the Greek elites are still pocketing the funds provided by hard-pressed EU and Anglo-American taxpayers.

Tell me, exactly what is it about their growing unpopularity that the CDU bigwigs don’t understand?


The Slog

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