Translator: Nikoletta Kritikou Reviewer: Miriela Patrikiadou
I'm a lawyer and criminologist.
I've been studying economic crime and corruption around the world.
It's particularly painful to look into Greece,
even though I've been away for 35 years.
Now, the conventional story about the Greek Crisis and the debt
is that it's due to domestic corruption, tax evasion
and a Greek mentality of not working too hard
and just taking care of one's self.
Clientelism,
and therefore, don't expect much to change any time soon.
Well, yes, corruption exists in Greece
but not just inside Greece.
The way I see the story is rather different
and you have to look at a number of other things as well.
You have to look at how the debt was created,
who contributed to that,
how the debt was hidden from public view,
what kind of solutions were applied
and what contributed to those,
if there were solutions at all.
Was actually Greece bailed out,
οr somebody else?
And as we go through this,
some ideas will come to mind and what can be done about that,
because there is hope
and we must pursue the change.
It is feasible and we have to defeat deafeatism
and I will show you why and how.
Now, starting with corruption in Greece.
Corruption is the misuse of private or public power and authority
for personal gain.
And we have a lot of things people are familiar with:
"Fakellakia", the little envelopes that you give someone
in order to get things done a little faster.
Speed money to get treatment at the hospital,
get clearance for customs faster.
This is the sort of thing that is widespread
and normalized in the sense that people do it without thinking
that there's much wrong about it,
especially if the doctor's, or other salaries
are not at real living standards.
Then we have other forms of corruption, quite serious:
Bribery from domestic and foreign companies
bribing domestic politicians,
we have oligarchic controls over industry,
sports, media, political finance and so on.
We do have tax evasion,
we do have problematic privatizations,
we even fix soccer matches.
So generalized but so easy to discover things are that,
Lake Kopais was drained in the mid 50's
and in 2010 there still existed an agency
with a number of people employed,
advertising for new employees every year,
with a president who had a permanent driver.
That was in 2010, so, the general picture here
is that we have a problem of overgrown administration,
clientelism, overregulation, inefficiency.
The oligarchic controls.
And that leads to this widespread culture of tolerance,
especially when corruption solves practical problems in everyday life.
All this leads to shortfalls in revenue
and a trust deficit, both in government and business.
But is this enough?
Does that explain the crisis?
As you will see, that is not the case.
The overspending Greeks were not doing more,
they were doing actually less than other Eurozone members.
There was only one area where we did overspend,
that was military.
We created 40 billion Euro
between '95 and 2009,
among other things, buying submarines from Germany.
Well, we didn't need submarines,
Greece was already underwater.
(Laughter)
Look at how the debt grew from 1981
to the time that the bubble burst.
And this was driven not by domestic banks,
which did have a lot of debt at the beginning,
but gradually, it was foreign banks,
especially French and German banks, that got in the game,
and it was a supply driven growth of debt
from the mid '90s to the 2010's.
And then, Greece could not meet the criteria of the Euro
and therefore they had to make it up,
they had to "cook" the books,
and they got assistance from an American financial institution
that applied rules that Eurostat actually approved.
It was legal!
These are the practices that are according to the letter of the law,
but when you look at the consequences, they're worse than crime.
These are the lawful but awful practices that I refer to.
And then, the crisis was recognized, and we had the IMF
and we had the European institutions coming to apply their cure,
even though the IMF knew full well, from the beginning,
that the debt in Greece was not sustainable.
They went trough violating their own rules,
because they cannot participate in something that's unsustainable,
and applied the austerity measures
which led to massive unemployment,
cuts in public services, health and so on.
Capital left Greece,
no foreign investment came in,
poverty and inequality grew,
depression, drug use, suicides, all went up.
Look at just the facts.
This is the government spending,
how it goes down.
This is the unemployment that goes up to above 25%.
Especially among those under 25, it goes beyond 60%.
All economic classes see their income drop substancially.
Poverty skyrockets.
Those at risk, especially those children under six,
and young people under eighteen, are at risk of poverty.
49% of them.
Inequality goes up,
health expenditures go down,
HIV rates move up,
suicide rises
and look at what the economy does:
it tanks 25% down.
Who wins out of this?
Of course then, people start looking for jobs in Australia,
Europe and the United States.
But who actually got something out of that?
The Euro we saved for a while,
the banks were bailed out,
and a German study found that the German treasury
benefited from the Greek crisis by 100 billion Euro,
because their borrowing costs went very low as well.
So, if Greece defaulted completely,
Germany would only lose 90 Euro out of that,
which means that they would be better off by at least 10 billion Euro.
Now, is this the bailout of Greece?
Really?
And a German minister said,
"Some states apparently believe they bare no responsiblity
and are under no obligation
to participate in the joint response to the current great challenge".
But he was not referring to the Greek crisis,
it was the migration crisis,
about which, EU rules got a little flexible,
because of hundred of thousands of refugees.
But there was no flexibility in applying EU rules
to the millions of Greeks who were suffering under those.
So, I submit to you,
when the law produces results,
that bring about such misery,
these laws must change.
Insisting on applying the same rules,
the same projects, the same progress
that actually bring about the opposite results from those stated,
amounts to regulatory fundamentalism.
Not among the core values of the European project.
So, we have toxic loans, toxic medicine, toxic mining,
toxic diesel cars, toxic media comments,
toxic political and business cultures.
So, we need some detoxification all around.
We need to rethink, inside and outside Greece.
While we do this, we need to take a look at context.
What's wrong with this car?
Too many people on a badly maintained car.
A very good rule, traffic rule, says you can't do that.
It's bad for safety, it's bad for the car, but consider this:
These people are coming from the village where there are no jobs,
no public transportation,
no means to buy another way of getting from home to work
and bring some food to the table.
Not giving them a ticket,
not impounding the car,
is not because a traffic warden is on the take,
it is because he understands.
He sympathizes.
In the same way, you can't fight corruption
on an empty stomach.
You can't fight corruption when salaries are below real living standards
and people are looking left and right for solutions.
You need to prioritize,
you need to find what you do first, what you do second,
and you need to start fixing the economy at the same time.
Greece is not alone in trying to fight corruption,
but all around the world, we are failing.
And there are signs about this everywhere.
People are going after political opponents
instead of equally applying the law to everyone.
High officials enjoy impunity
and we go after middle and low level officials.
All kinds of metrics we use are disappointing.
We have more bureaucracy, more complexity in law,
more formalism over substance and the real goals,
why we have the rules and the processes in place,
and we even have new motives,
opportunities and incentives to engage in corruption.
These are World Bank institutes,
metrics of governance for the entire world.
And you can look at corruption at the bottom right.
If you are looking at the POD's of a patient,
that patient is dead.
Why?
No real political will, no looking into the causes,
society at large is not participating,
you have solutions from the top, or from outside the country.
One size fits all, therefore, "solutions", too much law,
no strategic approach,
what we do first, what we do second,
and who has what role about these things.
We just fragment the way in which we fight corruption
to multiple agencies, they get in the way of each other,
and educational institutions don't do enough
to promote a culture of integrity and capacity in societies,
to actually have the skills that it takes to make things different.
So, we're drilling holes in the water, we waste resources,
everything we do is unsustainable,
and changes, wherever they are attempted, and they are, in many many places,
they lose momentum, credibility and legitimacy.
Here, in Greece, there is the chance, the opportunity, right now,
to set an example of how to do things differently and well.
But there are challenges.
And there are needs.
Greece is in the intensive care, indeed.
Long-term thinking is actually a luxury,
especially as government is being micro-managed right now.
But we need to tackle the humanitarian crisis.
We need to have an accurate diagnosis of the problem, inclusive diagnosis,
which means that not just the government, all political parties,
privet sector, civil society, media, academics,
need to participate in what is the problem
and what are the possible solutions.
And we need the best brains to make the country healthy again.
You don't want to be operated by a first-year student.
By established doctors, right?
We need some good plans and advocacy
in the face of both regulatory fundamentalism from outside
and resistances that we will certainly have inside Greece.
But even though we have a plentiful world,
Greece cannot enjoy it, and is boosted into isolation
and blamed also from the outside.
This isolation and vulnerability is captured well in a film,
in a scene of a film,
"Taksidi sta Cythera", a trip to Cythera, of Aggelopoulos.
Let's take a look at it.
(Song from the soundtrack of "Voyage to Cythera")
(Applause)
Let us not abandon Greece and the vulnerable in the mist.
We can do better than that.
And the steps to build momentum and credibility are right in front of you.
We need genuine political will at the top,
government and government agencies.
We need, all together, to come up with priorities and solutions,
just as the patient going to intesive care
needs the ambulance, the ambulance driver,
the nurses, the doctors, the surgeons, the anesthesiologist.
All of us have a different role to play, to take care of the patient.
It is a collective action.
A challenge on how we bring competition, transparecy
and some accountability in this place.
Some long term planning.
Small successes that lead to the next step
and where we want to be in 5, 10, 20 years.
Simpler laws, stronger institutions and open government.
There are already good programs in Greece,
such as "DIAVGEIA" and "ELLAK"
and I invite you to support them.
Coordinated fight against corruption
and research institutions to build the capacity and the culture
of integrity we need.
We need accountability.
Those who actually are on the deck, they need to be sanctioned,
but we also have to look at the positive:
Where do we have the good examples, like the ones I mentioned?
We need to create those islands of integrity.
We monitor what we do,
we change the strategy as we go,
and yes, the one thing that people cannot take from Greece, is hope.
Hope is there.
There are practical answers and solutions in many countries.
Those islands of integrity you find from Romania to Colombia,
from Indonesia to the Philippines,
from Nigeria to Venezuela.
So, together we can get from the full catastrophe
to a rebirth of the Greek spirit.
We need solidarity, sustainable reforms,
trust in government and business,
economic growth and good governance.
Eunomia is the word.
Eunomia is a Greek word.
Let's practice it in its birthplace.
Thank you.
(Applause)