Once again, the international media, along with some EU officials, are presenting Greece's former chief statistician Andreas Georgiou as a martyr. The story goes as follows: during the crisis Mr. Georgiou was not only an honest but heroic apostle for truth in numbers, unflinching in revealing the awful reality about Greece's books despite political pressure to cook them; now he is being persecuted and punished for his heroics by a vindictive left-wing government- subjected to criminal prosecution and, most recently, conviction in a show trial. Yesterday, in an editorial, the Financial Times referred to Mr. Georgiou's trial as a "legal farce" that puts in question Greece's reforms.
It's easy to fall for this story as it appeals to many common prejudices and misconceptions about Greece. But it is mostly a fabrication among Mr. Georgiou's friends in the international economics technocracy.
Writing on this blog a year ago, I gave the basic background:to the criminal investigation and prosecution of Mr. Georgiou. It was not a vendetta of the Syriza government, but in fact a quite plausible set of allegations by a respectable academic economist on Mr. Georgiou's own staff, Zoe Georganta. As I noted then:
To be sure, Zoe Georganta, a professor at the University of Macedonia who was on Mr. Georgiou's staff at the time, doesn't have quite the neoliberal cosmopolitan pedigree of Mr. Georgiou, with his University of Michigan PhD and all those years at the Fund. But she does have a doctorate from Leeds in econometrics, and has been a visiting scholar at Cambridge University's department of economics as well as at Harvard and the NBER in the US-twice...It should be added that Professor Georganta is no puppet or apologist of Greek politicians: she ends a fascinating 2011 scholarly article "Greek Fiscal and Financial Data: More Than Meets the Eye" by accusing Greece's governments of having "promoted clientism to an extreme form.
Mr. Georgiou was initially acquitted on criminal charges, which were based in part on allegations of presenting statistical data in a misleading and improper fashion contrary to his duties as the country's chief statistician, at a time where these reports could have immediate and dramatic economic and financial consequences. That he was acquitted on that occasion is itself an indication that the story that the justice system in Greece was politically rigged against him is far too simplistic. But an appeals court (not the government) decided that the original trial was defective, and so Mr. Georgiou was tried a second time (many countries do not have the double jeopardy rule, and Greece is one of them).
This brings us to the more recent second trial, which the Financial Times and others are presenting as a show trial or a political trial. In fact, contrary to the implication of the Financial Times, in this second trial Mr. Georgiou was exonerated of charges related to allegations of false or misleading reporting of statistical data. He was only convicted with respect to his failure to operate within the proper governance structure of the statistical authority. It seems that when the board didn't agree with him, Mr. Georgiou defied them on occasion and knowingly acted beyond the limits of his authority as a public official. Should that be a criminal offense? Contrary to what some would have us believe, this law was not created to martyr Andreas Georgiou. In light of Greece's legacy of dictatorship going late into the 20th century, considering it a criminal offense for high-level officials to flout the rule of law doesn't seem inherently unreasonable. (I say this without offering an opinion as to whether I as a judge would find the evidence compelling that Mr. Georgiou did knowingly act beyond his powers).
In any event, despite all the show trial or political trial rhetoric, Greece's accusers have brought forth no evidence of any of the elements of a rigged or unfair process. Mr. Georgiou was represented by competent legal counsel of his choice, there is no indication that evidence was tampered with, that witnesses were intimidated, bribed or that they engaged in perjury, or that the trial was conducted outside the normal rule book in any way whatsoever. And, indeed, Mr. Georgiou is free to appeal his conviction to Greece's Supreme Court.
His own lawyer, far from complaining that the trial was a miscarriage of justice after Mr. Georgiou received a suspended sentence, said he considered it a "victory" for the defense. The attorney, George Stefanakis, explained:
It’s like being charged for a deadly traffic accident and being convicted for failing to renew your driver’s license … It is a resounding victory for Mr. Georgiou... We are very pleased with today’s result because he was cleared on the serious charges.
All too predictably, the kind of people who hate Greece (such as some northern European EU officials), or who are enemies of its left-wing government. get a hearing when they cry "show trial" to the Financial Times. But should (what I at least consider) the world's best English-language newspaper be giving them the benefit of the doubt, without further investigation? With the rule of law under full assault in places like Poland and Turkey, it is no time for responsible news organizations to be crying wolf about political trials in a functional constitutional democracy like Greece.