A growing number of lawsuits – three in total – against former finance minister Yanis Varoufakis have been received by Greece’s Parliament. The accusations concern his alleged “Plan B” – ostensibly an idea for a parallel payments system based on taxpayers’ personal tax numbers.
Until recently, Varoufakis was criticized for not having a backup plan in case talks with creditors failed, but now he is being accused for just that – Plan B, albeit a very peculiar one. According to critics, he was reckless and duplicitous when he allegedly brought together a group of five top associates to covertly hatch a plan in the face of decreasing liquidity and subsequent bank crisis, a development that actually occurred.
His fall-back plan, according to media reports citing a teleconference briefing of London-based hedge fund managers earlier this month, would have involved hacking into the tax bureau’s central server to retrieve millions of personal tax ID codes.
There’s just one problem: hacking into the tax system in Greece, and everywhere else, is illegal. Now, Varoufakis faces possible prosecution, assuming enough evidence warrants an indictment and if his ministerial immunity status — at the time he was minister — is overruled.
However, Varoufakis — who’s previously experienced “economic warfare” from the …sidelines of academia and as a “flamboyant” maverick economist before turning up in Greek ‘leftish’ politics — argues that desperate times call for desperate measures. He’s even claimed that the General Secretariat of Public Revenues within the Ministry of Finance is fully controlled y the Troika of Greece’s creditors (EC, ECB and IMF), a reason supposedly given for the “hacking” idea.
