ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Greece’s judicial authorities have refused, for the third time, to indict the country’s former statistics chief for allegedly inflating the 2009 budget shortfall to force the country to seek its international bailouts.
An Athens council of judges on Thursday found no evidence to try Andreas Georgiou on criminal charges of alleged false certification.
Similar decisions had been taken twice since Georgiou was first charged in 2013, but twice the Supreme Court ordered the politically charged case re-examined. It was unclear whether this would happen again.
Georgiou took the helm at the statistics agency at an inopportune time, just months after Greece had revised upward its previously misreported budget deficit data. A former agency board member claimed the new data were artificially inflated.
European Union officials have repeatedly defended his work.
