The Blind Spot Surrounding the 2005 'Major Restructuring' of the Goldman/Greek Secret Loan
The EU Commission was at the forefront of the response to the revelation in 2010 of irregularities in Greece's government statistics and in particular the 2.8 billion Euros secret loan it received from Goldman Sachs in 2001 (see this article at Bloomberg).
Has it delivered and has parliamentary oversight been adequate?
We tried to answer in a December 2011 article by comparing the results of a thorough audit from Eurostat with initiatives from legislative bodies in the EU and the UK and Goldman Sachs' communication (see MarketOracle). In short, there were serious lapses that point to a deception.
We revisit the issue based on additional material, an April 2010 hearing in the EU parliament (video footage included in this article) and the work of the special committee in charge of studying the causes of the financial crisis, CRIS.
The time is opportune following Nick Dundbar's recent report which reveals important details about the imbalanced relationship between Greece's debt agency and the bank (see Bloomberg). That reinforces our case that EU's officials have limited their reach to regularizing the accounts, not investigating the actions of the parties involved.
The ECB-G30 conflict
In November 2011, Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO), a Brussels based lobby watchdog, asked Mario Draghi to withdraw from the group of G30 because it conflicts with his duties as ECB President. According to them the ECB's press office dodged their criticism and, in February 2012, they referred the matter to the ethics officer of the ECB.
This referral comes as it is uncovered that Draghi stated in writing that there were no relevant personal factors to be taken into account in considering his nomination in June 2011. It is misleading because it fails to disclose a conflict of interest (Nouvel Observateur). Specifically, his son has been working for some years as an interest rate trader at Morgan Stanley (LinkedIn). The code of conduct of the ECB warns against "potential advantage for [the] families [of the Governing Council]". It's a real risk. In January 2012 the president of the Swiss National Bank was forced to resign after it was found his wife traded on insider knowledge, reported The Telegraph.