Bakoyianni Says Her Husband Transferred 1M Euros to Buy Ship

ATHENS – With Greece abuzz about the identity of a Member of Parliament said to have transferred 1,000,000 euros ($1.34 million) abroad at a time when Greeks were being asked not to panic and keep their money in Greek banks, former foreign minister Dora Bakoyianni has stepped forward to say it was a convoluted case in which the money was that of her husband’s, a ship owner, who used it to buy a vessel.
Bakoyianni, a former stalwart in the New Democracy conservative party before being tossed out after disagreeing with its policies, and setting up her own tiny political group, told reporters outside the Parliament that it was a case of a simple business transaction and decried what she called “an unbelievable farce.”
Bakoyianni said the money had been used for a commercial transaction that was neither illegal nor unethical. “We are talking about an informed corporate activity that was already publicly known,” Bakoyannis said in Parliament. “This has no relationship whatsoever to my political activity.” She added: “I have made public, from the first day and until today every euro and every drachma that I have managed,” she said. She called on the prosecutor to disclose the name of the informant who had accused her husband and claimed that she was the subject of a smear campaign.
She said when the news first came out about the transfer, she too demanded to know who it was until she was questioned by the Parliament’s Vice President, Vangelis Argyris, about a payment made to a London bank in March last year, and explained that the money had been related to an investment by her husband, Isidoros Kouvelos, the owner of a shipping firm. Bakoyannis said that her husband’s money came from stocks on the New York exchange which were liquidated through a Greek bank and used to buy a ship in London.
She said she believed an attempt was being made to “cover up politicians that had really transferred their money to Swiss bank accounts to save it from Greece,” even as Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos, who is negotiating with Swiss officials to find out who they are. None of the 300 MP’s in their recent declarations of wealth said they had accounts outside Greece, but Venizelos said that many politicians and their relatives who transferred more than 100,000 euros, or $134,000,  outside the country to foreign banks. While it’s not unlawful to do so, it is if the monies are not declared. A furor began last week when the head of the country’s anti money-laundering agency claimed that an unidentified MP had removed one million euros in savings out of the country last spring even as authorities were appealing to Greek citizens not to panic in a bid to avert a bank run.