online.wsj.com/article/...2748703636404575352991108208712.html
...spending more than a billion euros on two submarines from Germany.
It's also looking to spend big on six frigates and 15 search-and-rescue helicopters from France. In recent years, Greece has bought more than two dozen F16 fighter jets from the U.S. at a cost of more than €1.5 billion. Much of the equipment comes from Germany, the country that has had to shoulder most of the burden of bailing out Greece and has been loudest in condemning Athens for living beyond its means. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has admonished the Greek government "to do its homework" on debt reduction.
The military deals illustrate how Germany and other creditors have in some ways benefited from Greece's profligacy, and how that is coming back to haunt them.
Greece, with a population of just 11 million, is the largest importer of conventional weapons in Europe—and ranks fifth in the world behind China, India, the United Arab Emirates and South Korea. Its military spending is the highest in the European Union as a percentage of gross domestic product. That spending was one of the factors behind Greece's stratospheric national debt.
The German submarine deal in particular, announced in March as the country lurched toward bankruptcy, has cast a spotlight on the Greek military budget and on the foreign vendors supplying the hardware. The deal includes a total of six subs in a complicated transaction that began a decade ago with German firms.
The arms sales are drawing heat from Turkey, Greece's neighbor and arch-rival.....
German prosecutors are investigating whether millions of euros in bribes were paid to Greek officials in connection with the sub deal. In May, the chief executive of one of the German companies helping to build the submarines, called Ferrostaal AG, resigned amid the probe.
.....The German side consisted of a company owned by German truckmaker MAN SE, called Ferrostaal, and Howaldtswerke-Deutsche Werft, now owned by ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems AG. (MAN has since reduced its stake in Ferrostaal to 30%.)
The total cost of the new and renovated subs: €2.84 billion. ...
"The Navy said we cannot accept this sub," said Mr. Fenekos, the admiral who recently resigned. "But the politicians did not want to stop it because they needed the production for the workers in the shipyard here."
ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems said the criticism was baseless and was made to delay payment.By last fall, Greece had paid €2.032 billion, about 70% of the total owed. With the deal at an impasse, the German companies cancelled the contract....With 1,200 shipyard jobs at stake, Germany demanding concessions on the complex deal, and Greece having already paid two billion euros without receiving a single sub, the new arrangement was necessary
But in February, just as a solution appeared to be at hand, German prosecutors in Munich began turning up evidence of unsavory dealings, according to records of their investigation.
Ferrostaal executives authorized payments worth millions of euros to politicians to win the initial deal in 2000, through a Greek company called Marine Industrial Enterprises, according to the Munich prosecutor's records.
To do this, Ferrostaal used sham consulting contracts, according to the records. That company then distributed payments to "officials and decision-makers" in Greece, according to the records. The investigation is ongoing. No charges have been filed. ...
In recent years, Greece has bought more than two dozen F16 fighter jets from the U.S. at a cost of more than €1.5 billion, or about $1.89 billion.
Zurück
