Greece’s Supreme Court on Monday partially revoked a decision to drop charges against Andreas Georgiou, the former head of Greece’s independent Statistics Agency ELSTAT, for presenting artificially inflated figures for Greece’s deficit in 2009.
The court accepted a motion filed in 2015 by then Deputy Supreme Court Prosecutor Xeni Dimitriou — now a Supreme Court Prosecutor — that Georgiou should face criminal charges for making a false statement.
As a result, Georgiou is once again indicted to appear before an Appeals Justices’ Council for a new judgement on two counts, the original charge of misconduct for which he has already been indicted and the additional criminal charge of making a false statement.
The court revoked a 2015 ordinance that decided against charging Georgiou and two senior ELSTAT officials — Konstantinos Molfetas and Athanasia Xenaki — for false statements at the expense of the public sector, aggravated due to the extremely high sums involved.
According to the charges, the inflated figures for the deficit given by Georgiou and the other two officials in 2009 were used to justify Greece’s entry into memorandum programs.
As a result, the case will now go before an Appeals Justices’ Council for consideration once again.
The issue of ELSTAT was first raised by the Athens Bar Association in 2011, in a lawsuit that had been shelved at the time, but was then revived in 2013 through a letter that the bar association sent to the Supreme Court prosecutor.
Source: ANA-MPA
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