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Greek lawmakers to probe ex FinMin Papaconstantinou over Lagarde List
After a marathon and stormy meeting, Greek lawmakers voted overwhelmingly to refer ex Finance Minister George Papaconstantinou to face parliamentary inquiry over allegations he tampered the Lagarde list and removed the names of three relatives from the list of Greek bank account holders at HSBC bank in Geneva.
A total of 265 out of 300 lawmaker voted in favor of Papaconstantinou to be probed, while the majority of them voted to take no further action against ex finance minister and PASOK leader Evangelos Venizelos and former prime ministers George Papandreou and Lukas Papademos.
For Venizelos probing 124 lawmakers voted in favor, for Papandreou 80 and for Papademos 63.
Papaconstantinou received 265 YES votes from coalition government lawmakers (ND-PASOK-Democratic Left =163 seats) and 102 from opposition parties. It means some of the opposition (124 seats) lawmakers and independent MPs did not vote in favor.
Next step for Papaconstaninou’s inquiry is the immediate formation of a 15-member investigation committee at the Parliament, consisting of lawmakers form all political parties. The committee will be obliged to deliver its findings until February 25th, 2013.
The voting was originally to start at 7 p.m. however a dragged-out debate and disagreement over the content of ballot papers meant ended in voting to start after midnight. The voting results were announced at 2:30 in the morning.
Additional cause for dispute was the fact that Justice Minister Antonis Roupakiotis submitted to the Parliament 120 extra pages containing witnesses testimonies and documents from judicial and economic institutions on the case of Lagarde list. and thus at 10:30 p.m. Opposition parties demanded the vote would be postponed for Friday so they would have the chance to read the additional material.
However coalition government lawmakers, who hold the majority of votes in the Parliament, rejected the opposition request.
Further reading: ekathimerini, enet.gr, newsit.gr
2013-01-18 02:30:22
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