Maverick Greek finance chief flaunts wealth

PHOTOGRAPHS of Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis in his beautiful Athens home in a French celebrity magazine caused a storm on social media on Friday as his ministry admitted it may raid the country’s social security funds to stave off bankruptcy.

Varoufakis is seen in Paris Match at a piano in his living room, and dining on the roof terrace of his “love nest at the foot of the Acropolis”.

Paris Match revealed that Varoufakis and his wife, artist Danae Stratou, are about to move from their home in the fashionable Plaka district to a larger apartment owned by her industrialist family. The reaction on social media was instant and unforgiving of the finance chief in Greece’s new hard-left Syriza government, which has described the country’s financial plight as a humanitarian crisis.

Varoufakis’s fellow economist, Benn Steil of the US Council on Foreign Relations, joked: “Lifestyles of the rich and famous, Syriza edition”. Eric Maurice of the European Journalists Association tweeted: “Varoufakis has a good lifestyle but very bad PR.”

The article came days after Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said he had asked his flamboyant finance chief and other ministers not to give so many interviews and to focus on getting things done.

The heavily indebted country faces repayments of à6- billion (about R78.7-billion) in the next two weeks alone, and, with its bailout frozen, the finance ministry is asking parliament to allow it to raise money from the reserves of the pensions and social security system. —