A senior Greek finance official was charged on Wednesday with leaking a state document used in the country’s crucial EU-IMF audit talks, the state-run Athens News Agency said.
Lambros Liosis, a budget supervisor at the General Accounting Office who denies the charge, was conditionally released pending his trial, ANA said.
Liosis is accused of leaking a finance ministry document that would have been used in Greece’s talks with its international creditors as Athens seeks to win more time to implement tough economic reforms.
A picture of the alleged document, published on Greek blog site zougla.gr, showed an exchange of emails between finance officials trying to bridge widely differing estimates on future tax crackdown proceeds.
EU-IMF auditors doubt the General Accounting Office’s estimate that the state could earn an extra 924 million euros from higher collections next year, said one of the correspondents whose name was blanked out.
And the finance ministry gave a starkly lower estimate of 131 million euros in additional revenue, the blog site quoted the same person as saying.
Lawyers for Liosis say the emailed document, which he had printed and left on his desk, must have been photocopied by someone inside the state agency.
Only deputy finance minister Christos Staikouras, Liosis and two other officials had been sent the email, ANA said.
The incident is the second security breach at the General Accounting Office in a month.
In July, burglars broke into the office of Staikouras, who had just assumed his duties, making off with his passport and documents ahead of the audit that will determine Greece’s continued access to loans.
(source: ANA, AFP)
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