George Provopoulos, the head of Greece’s central bank, says his country is past the worst of the crisis. Confidence is rising, the government is working and some hope for a return to normality in the not too distant future. But highly charged allegations against the head of Greece’s statistics agency suggest that it might be the wrong kind of normality – where politics takes precedence over national interests.
Andreas Georgiou left a 21-year career at the International Monetary Fund in 2010 to return to Greece at the request of then Prime Minister George Papandreou. His brief was to create an independent statistics agency that would restore the faith of Greece’s creditors in the nation’s numbers. For years, these had been manipulated for political ends.
Almost immediately he faced roadblocks. At one stage he even had to circumvent an obstructive finance ministry by appealing to the troika of Greece’s creditors to ensure he had the funds to fulfil his mission. Since his appointment, statistics have been accepted without question by Eurostat.