Greek Finance Minister Yannis Stournaras on Aug. 18 forced the resignation of the head of the Hellenic Republic Asset Development Fund (TAIPED) Stelios Stavridis, who is overseeing a lagging privatization effort that has been a major disappointment in raising revenues.
According to the newspaper Proto Thema, Stavridis accepted a ride to the island of Kefalonia, where he has a summer home, on the private jet of the well-known Greek businessman Dimitris Melissanidis, a shareholder in the Greek-Czech consortium that bought OPAP.
That was immediately after Stavridis came to TAIPED headquarters on Aug. 12 to sign the contract of sale of the 33 percent of the gambling monopoly OPAP. The contract was signed in presence of Stournaras.
Melissanidis, nicknamed the Tiger, is a Greek business magnate who is a member of the Forbes list of the world’s 500 richest people. There was no explanation as to whether there was a feeling of conflict of interest with Stavridis flying in the jet of the man buying OPAP.
Stavridis told Proto Thema, “I had come to Athens for one day in order to sign the sale and I would leave the next day at dawn with a flight leaving at 5:20 in the morning, so I had to wake up at 4:00 a.m. which was really early. But Mr. Melissanidis was going to France and offered to give me a lift to Kefalonia where he refueled his Learjet so I saved a day of my vacations”.
He also added: “During the flight, he discussed for the sale of OPAP as we always do with Mr. Melissanidis. He is still very upset about the issue of lottery and thinks that the agreement should be done like this. We do not agree at all with what he supports. Even though we disagreed for months on the same topic, we have managed to maintain an excellent level of relations with him”. Stavridis owns a house on the Ionian island of Kefalonia where he and his family spend the holidays every summer.
Greece’s international lenders, the Troika of the European Union-International Monetary Fund-European Central Bank (EU-IMF-ECB) have been pressuring Prime Minister Antonis Samaras to pick up the pace of selling or leasing state entities and properties.
TAIPED suffered a big setback earlier this year when it failed to get a single bidder for the state gas company DEPA and other state properties are still up for sale with little interest and little apparent effort being made to move them.
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