Speculation about Greece's Books Mount

Suspicions that statistics from Greece were overlooked by the European Union officials while negotiating Greece's entry for the single currency in 2002, according to a report published by the Federation of European Employers (FedEE). The report by the think tank servicing multinational companies operating in Europe questions who is to blame for taxpayer around the world having to pay $300 billion for the blunder. The FedEE reviewed the report published in November 2004 by the European statistics library in Luxembourg. The report charts the frustrated efforts of the EU statisticians over an eight-year period to persuade the Greek government to provide honest and accurate statistics. Inconsistencies in the interpretation of capital transfers as a counterpart to various items of debt assumptions were pointed out in a letter by the director general of Eurostat to the National Statistical Service of Greece. The letter went on to say, "Eurostat could not agree with the exclusion of the counterpart transaction from the net borrowing requirement of the general government sector." The report alleges that from that time, the Greek Statisical Service would apparently conform to EU requests but later falsify the figures. In 1997, the EU instructed that "these corrections" should be done immediately and "in spite of this conclusion, Greece did not revise its figures and did not transmite a revised notification". The pattern of number fudgin repeated itself with disastrous results in 2009. In October that year, just after Greece's new finance minister, George Papakonstantinou took office he announced the the government debt was THREE times higher than his predecessors had let on - 12.8% instead of 3.6%. Six month later, further calculations put the debt at a staggering 13.6%!!! These figures set off the international alarm bells about Greece's fiscal situation. Even the new Greek prime minister, George Papandreou referred to the National Statistical Service of Greece as a "joke". The stats agency was subquently made independent of the government as a condition of the bailout package in 2010. The secretary general of the FedEE, Robin Chater, wanted to know why no one has been held responsible for allowing Greece to join the eurozone in the first place. More to follow on this as the EU story unfolds.