Varoufakis: PM Tsipras asked me to prepare a Plan X

He admitted he was recording all meetings of the Euro Working Group

Former Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis revealed that Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras had asked him to prepare a Plan X, in case Greece was forced to exit euro zone.

As he said in an interview in private TV channel SKAI, only 5-6 persons knew about that plan which included, data on food and medicine. Mr. Varoufakis also revealed that Greek government’s secret weapon would have been ” the restructuring of ECB’s bonds” and claimed that the government had reached an agreement with China to get a financial aid, but that “agreement was cancelled by a phone call from Berlin”.

Former Finance Minister admitted that he was recording all meetings of the Euro Working Group (apart from the first one) and he had also made copies of the recordings which were given to the members of the political negotiation team. He claimed that he decided to record the meetings so as to remember exactly what was discussed and inform accordingly and in details the government and the Greek parliament. However, he did not rule out the possibility to use the documents in the future. “I don’t know, I don’t intend to use them for the moment,” he said.

He also revealed that he was ready to proceed to the restructuring of ECB’s bonds and apply a parallel payment system before the referendum hoping that this move would force Merkel and Draghi “to have the debate we expected”.

Mr. Varoufakis denied that he had plans for a ” dual currency “, but he confirmed that he was considering a system of electronic trading without using the banks so as to deal with the bank holiday. He also denied that he was planning to hack the tax accounts of citizens.

Focusing on the difficulties of the negotiation, Mr. Varoufakis argued that in fact the first time that Greece was threatened to see its banks closed was a few days after the elections conducted in January, when Jeroen Dijsselbloem visited Athens and told him that Greece’s only choice was to accept the program as it was.

As for his resignation, Mr. Varoufakis said that he had no other choice than to resign when on the night of referendum Prime Minister announced him his decision to accept the proposals of the institutions.