Germans and French Using Crisis to Push Arms Sales on Greece?

[wickedfairy]

Max Keiser mentioned the Greek arms sales over the last week or so. Will root it out!

[Ephilant]

Associated Press says they have sight of further EU/IMF austerity measures to be imposed on Greece at tomorrow's Eurogroup meeting. One of the demands, according to AP, is a further reduction of the military budget by 300 million. They have already agreed to a 400 million cut. Combined, this would about half our previous "defence" budget. I can't believe that the death merchants are just going to give up on such a willing partner as Greece always seemed to be. Mind you, the willingness was always directly related to the size of the bribe. After all, a submarine or 2 should be worth a hefty envelope under the table.

[Dr. FIVE]

The Greeks "paid double" for German submarines with a couple of noughts tagged on to the end of every purchase and skimmed off by various Greek elites and German suppliers.

Between 2002-04, Ferrostaal paid 7.5m euros to PDM and Zelan. No activity of any substance can be traced to this Cypriot-based duo, and all the record of directors have vapourised. But their job was to ‘facilitate contract awards’ by Greek ministries. ‘The complete lack of any documentation supporting performance by these companies raises serious concerns’, says a confidential German report. In 2004, Dusseldorf prosecutors fingered Sotiris Emmanouil, the head of Hellenic Shipyards, as the recipient of illegal bribes running into millions of euros by yet another intermediary – HDW – and a later report showed he had indeed received 2.2 million euros via an affiliate in October of that year. Again, no evidence of services supplied exists. In July 2007, 11 million euros were handed to shady ‘facilitators’ Dolmarton. No back-up of tasks performed.

But when it comes to the Greek government’s purchase of four 214 Class submarines from Germany after 2000, you have to see the amounts syphoned off to believe them. Says the legal investigation referred to earlier:

‘The Project Archimedes [submarine supply] contract was signed in 2000. It was in the volume of 1.14bn euros…..the [German supplier] consortium incurred additional offset obligations of 1.53 billion euros.’

So the price to the Greek taxpayer doubled….entirely due to corrupt payments made to the Greek governing elite.

A fourth submarine supply contract was signed May 2002. The audit investigation quoted above states that it ‘had a volume of approximately 464.9m euros….and offset obligations of 563 million…’

Again, backhanders doubled the price. And, say several Greek sources, even the ‘real’ price had been stuffed with additional items that represented profiteering by Ferrostaal and its associates.

Read the whole lot. Very interesting

http://hat4uk.wordpress.com/2012/03/...o-sink-greece/

[C. Flower]

The Greek politicians were bought, but it was the arms manufacturers/dealers who really milked it.

PASOK up to the eyeballs in it.

The fate of semi-colonial countries, to be ruled by a corrupt intermediary class of self-seeking sell-outs ?

http://www.politicalworld.org/showpo...postcount=1181

http://www.ekathimerini.com/4dcgi/_w...02/2012_426831

[Dr. FIVE]

One major factor is that France and Germany's arms industries have greatly profited from this profligate military spending, leading their governments to put pressure on Greece not to cancel lucrative arms deals. In the five years up to 2010, Greece purchased more of Germany's arms exports than any other country, buying 15% of its weapons. Over the same period, Greece was the third-largest customer for France's military exports and its top buyer in Europe. Significantly, when the first bail-out package was being negotiated in 2010, Greece spent 7.1bn euros (£5.9bn) on its military, up from 6.24bn euros in 2007. A total of £1bn was spent on French and German weapons, plunging the country even further into debt in the same year that social spending was cut by 1.8bn euros. It has claimed by some that this was no coincidence, and that the EU bail-out was explicitly tied to burgeoning arms deals. In particular, there is alleged to have been concerted pressure from France to buy several stealth frigates. Meanwhile Germany sold 223 howitzers and completed a controversial deal on faulty submarines, leading to an investigation into accusations of bribes being given to Greek officials.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...itary-spending

[Dr. FIVE]

Portugal is Germany’s second largest arms purchaser.

http://www.creditwritedowns.com/2012...-weaponry.html

[morticia]

What on earth does Portugal need a huge army for??

[Dr. FIVE]

Castilians with long memories

[Dr. FIVE]

Congratulations on your prize everyone