Varoufakis’ 3 musketeers: Meet the man’s men…

Did you think Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis is eccentric? Just meet his advisers!

Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis has signed on a number of specialized economists to help come up with ways to take Greece out of its quandary.

Daniel Munevar Sastre

DAN

The Colombian Keynesian economist Daniel Munevar Sastre was in Greece from March 23 to April 2 for 11 days with Varoufakis. Together they looked at the Gordian Knot of the Greek economy. The 10-night accommodation, hospitality expenses and Zurich-Athens-Copenhagen flight all at Greek taxpayers expenses, but viewed as an investment as the 30-year-old financial Bogota-born whiz kid managed to lift himself from the drug-laden streets to become one of the foremost figures in the study of Latin American public debt. A participant in the committee for the cancellation of third-world debt, he has studied under economist James Galbraith, who Varoufakis respects both as a friend and colleague.

Soroosh Shambayati

SOROOSH

The Iranian chemistPhD turned investment banker made the leap in the Nineties. For him, monetary transactions have the same precision as the synthesizing of an organic compound, reaction by reaction. He traveled from Geneva to Athens from March 24-25 to look at the synthetic makeup of Greek debt.

With a tenure at Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and Lehman Brothers, he compares the 2008 Lehman Bank collapse to being in a plane crash. He is currently a managing director at the LG Group where he is responsible for LG Capital.

Regarding tax, he states that the more complex a system is, the less taxpayers show up to contribute.

Born in Iran, he left the country with the arrival of the Ayatollah Homeini.

Glen Kim

KIM

The U.S. Korean economist arrived in Athens from London on March 24 and was part of the Greek delegation with the Brussels Group on March 28 and moved that day from London to Brussels by train. He also accompanied the Greek minister to meetings at Eurogroup/Ecofin from February 16-17 and March 9-12.

A chief economist for Lehman Brothers, he worked with the credit institution in the U.S., Asia and Europe for 21 years.

Following the clearance of Lehman Brothers, he moved to Frankfurt and was a strategic adviser to German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble before accepting a post at Moelis & Company global investment bank as a managing director in its European branch.