Greece rocked by reports of secret plan to raid banks for drachma return
Source: theguardian.com
Opposition demands answers after covert proposals attributed to Yanis Varoufakis and fellow ex-minister highlight deep split in Syriza party
Some members of Greece’s leftist-led government wanted to raid central bank reserves and hack taxpayer accounts to prepare a return to the drachma, according to reports that highlighted the chaos in the ruling Syriza party.
It is not clear how seriously the government considered the plans, attributed to former energy minister Panagiotis Lafazanis and ex-finance minister Yanis Varoufakis. Lafazanis was sacked from his post and Varoufakis resigned earlier this month. However, the revelations have been seized on by opposition parties who are demanding an explanation.
The reports on Sunday came at the end of a week of fevered speculation over what Syriza hardliners had in mind as an alternative to the tough bailout terms Tsipras has reluctantly accepted to keep Greece in the eurozone.
About a quarter of the party’s 149 MPs rebelled over proposals to pass sweeping austerity measures in exchange for up to €86bn (£60bn) in fresh loans. Tsipras has been struggling to hold the party together.
In an interview with Sunday’s edition of the RealNews daily, Lafazanis said he had urged the government to tap the reserves of the Bank of Greece in defiance of the European Central Bank.
Lafazanis, the leader of a hardline Syriza faction that has argued for a return to the drachma, said the move would have allowed pensions and public sector wages to be paid if Greece were forced out of the euro.
“The main reason for that was for the Greek economy and Greek people to survive, which is the utmost duty every government has under the constitution,” he said.
In a separate report in the conservative Kathimerini newspaper, Varoufakis was quoted as saying that a small team in Syriza had prepared plans to secretly copy online tax codes. It said the “plan B” was devised to allow the government to introduce a parallel payment system if the banks were closed down.
[...]
Read the rest: theguardian.com
