Already not paying back hundreds of millions of euros in bank loans despite getting big grants from state coffers, the PASOK Socialist party is scrambling to find out what happened to 114.5 million euros ($149.2 million) that officials said they can’t find.
The party’s political council is set to meet next week to discuss the mystery of where the money went although political parties in Greece, who are routinely granted huge loans without collateral and don’t pay them back, don’t have to account for how they spend it or money they take from the state treasury as well.
The newspaper Efimerida ton Syntakton reported that PASOK leader Evangelos Venizelos had appointed five accounting firms (Grant Thornton, Ernst & Young, KPMG, Deloitte & Touche and PWC Greece) to conduct an it to find out where the missing money, spent between 2007-10 without records being kept, had gone.
The party’s leader during that time was George Papandreou, who was elected Prime Minister in 2009 but resigned in 2011 after relentless protests, strikes and riots against austerity measures he imposed on the orders of international lenders putting up $325 billion in two bailouts.
PASOK did not confirm the report but did say that an audit had been carried out on financial records between 2004 and 2010. It said that the accountants’ findings would be discussed by the appropriate party bodies.
The newspaper claims that accountants found that spending approved by Papandreou, as well as ex-secretary Nikos Athanasakis and General Secretary Rovertos Spyropoulos, did not have the necessary paperwork and no one knows where it went. Spyropoulos issued a statement yesterday saying the claims bore “no relation to the truth,” but offered no explanation where the money was.
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