Crime rates up; policing rates down

Numbers speak the truth and refer to 2007:

• Vehicle thefts up 9%
• Breaking and entering up 7%
• Bank robberies up 17%

Money Laundering in Greece and Zorba(s) the Greek

Don't forget to add detergent!

It can’t be!

The Financial Action Task Force finds that Greece is Non-Compliant with regard to enacting money laundering legislation.

In a detailed report issued in June 2007, the FATF finds that Greece has taken exemplary action to ensure that:

• The Greek independent Authority for money laundering has no human or other resources, as it only employs 3 people when the law spoke of up to 50; it is underfunded; and it is under-equipped.
• the Authority is not independent at all since it is managed by high ranking employees of certain ministries.

The FATF also finds that laundered money is not $1.6 billion per year as Greece reports, but much higher.

So what did the government do about it since then? Let’s take a look…

Last year, the government covered up a scandal of huge proportions, where the public was taken into a scam in the magnitude of €280 million in state bonds.

The government said it’s up to the judicial to find the culprits. Mr Zorbas, a public official who was the only one determined to uncover the truth, got into a clash with the government and was summarilly forced into early retirement from the judicial and was placed as head of the committe for black money.

To make things worse, now that the Siemens scandal is raging as who how much money the two leading parties had received from the megacorporation in exchange for public projects, Zorbas owed the government one.

So, in his new position he started digging.

And what did the government do when he found something?

They created a bill that was voted into law the same day (a procedure that normally takes months or years) that disbanded the committe effective immediately and ruled out retired public officials from being chosen to participate in the new committee whenever it might be formed, effectively keeping Mr Zorbas out of reach of sensitive information that might damage any of the two leading political parties.

Mr Zorbas makes us proud. Corrupt governments do not.