Unless there are snap general elections, ex-finance minister Giorgos Papaconstantinou will stand before a special court by February 11 to answer charges that he tampered with a list containing the names of more than 2,000 Greeks with deposits at the Geneva branch of HSBC in order to remove the names of three relatives.
The special court will convene for the first time in more than two decades after a judicial council decided, in a four-to-one ruling, that Papaconstantinou should be tried for allegedly covering up his relatives’ deposits of 1.2 million euros. The judges decided that Papaconstantinou should not face charges of breach of duty and that his relatives need not be tried either as there is no evidence to suggest they were the moral instigators.
Information included in the judges’ ruling suggests that the first thing Papaconstantinou did when he received the so-called Lagarde list is search for depositors with his surname and then with the surname of the prime minister at the time, George Papandreou.
The trial at the special court must begin within two months. If there are elections, there will be a brief delay.