Greek appeals court drops charges over ex-stats chief

Greece’s court of appeal said on Friday it would not pursue charges against the country’s former statistics agency chief who was accused of rigging state data to help creditors.

The case surrounding embattled statistician Andreas Georgiou had long been a source of concern among lenders, who have extended three bailout loans to Greece since 2010. His accusers maintained his re-calculation of deficit data helped creditors, and weakened Greece.

Georgiou had faced charges from a prosecutor - which he denied - of falsifying fiscal data from 2009.

But in a majority vote published on Friday, Greece’s court of appeal said that there was insufficient evidence to try Georgiou and two co-defendants who also worked at ELSTAT, the country’s national statistics agency.

Georgiou has been acquitted by a different court over breach of duty charges, which he denied. The prosecution has appealed against that decision and a final ruling is pending.

A former International Monetary Fund statistician, Georgiou was appointed to head ELSTAT in 2010 and worked there until mid-2015 when his contract ended.

Discrepancies in the way Greece calculated its budget deficit before 2010 was one of the triggers of the financial crisis which subsequently engulfed Greece. (RTRS)