Denne artikkelen er skrevet av Kerin Hope i Financial Times. DN.no har innledet et samarbeid med avisens nettside ft.com (se faktaboks til høyre).
Deals that moved debt off the balance sheet were accepted as "quite legal" ways to reduce the deficit, writes Kerin Hope.
"Why not securitise the Parthenon?" asked Nikos Christodoulakis, the innovative finance minister who was casting round for ways of reducing Greece's large public debt shortly after the country joined the eurozone in May 2001.
His "Eureka!" moment involved issuing a securitisation bond backed by a stream of future revenues from annual ticket sales to some 6m tourists who visit the classical temples on the Acropolis, as well as other ancient monuments around Greece.
That deal fell through, partly because of objections from archaeologists who feared it would quickly lead to the development of Disney-style theme parks on cherished ancient sites.
Yet the Cambridge University-educated finance minister was able to put together several other securitisation projects, with the help of investment banks eager to earn handsome fees and commissions for moving Greek debt off the national balance sheet.
Greece's biggest securitisation deal, through an SPV named Atlas, took place in 2001 when it raised €2bn backed by grants the finance ministry expected to receive from European Union structural funds over the following seven years.
Greece and other southern eurozone countries - mainly Italy but also Portugal - made use of securitisation issues, to help reduce their budget deficit and debt figures to below the 3 per cent of gross domestic product ceiling for eurozone member states.
Investment banks, including Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank and Citi's investment banking arm, "were keen to tout these deals because of the high fees involved - much higher than if Greece had just gone out to borrow on the international debt market", a Greek banker said yesterday.
The banks' role in the unfolding Greek debt crisis now seems set to face scrutiny after Brussels said it was looking into currency swaps, another type of transaction Athens entered into on advice from investment banks. Nevertheless, at the time of the securitisation deals, Eurostat, the European Union's statistical office, accepted them as "quite legal", said a former Greek finance ministry official who worked with Mr Christo-doulakis.
"We cleared them all with Eurostat," the official said. "There was nothing secret about any of them. They were given the same rating as Greece's sovereign rating by Moodys and the other agencies," he said. "The rules changed after 2004 when securitisations started to be recorded as part of the public debt," the official said.
"So we stopped doing them".
Greece raised more than €4bn ($5.44bn, £3.47bn) from a series of securitisations during Mr Christodoulakis's tenure as minister between 2001 and 2004.
Each issue was made using a different company, known as a special purpose vehicle (SPV). Aptly, most were named after characters from Greek mythology.
An SPV named Aeolos after the Greek god of winds, raised €355m in 2001. The issue was backed by revenues owed to the Greek state by international airlines using Greek airspace and paying landing fees at domestic airports. Another, backed by revenues from OPAP, the state lottery organisations, was named Ariadne after the princess who found her way through the labyrinth at Knossos in Crete.
Greece's biggest securitisation deal, through an SPV named Atlas, took place in 2001 when it raised €2bn backed by grants the finance ministry expected to receive from European Union structural funds over the following seven years.
The SPV set up for the deal involving future EU transfers, named Atlas Securitisation in full, was arran-ged by BNP Paribas and Deutsche Bank, along with two Greek banks, EFG Eurobank and National Bank of Greece.
After a conservative government took over in 2004, Eurostat carried out an investigation into Greek statistical reporting.
"Issues of off-balance sheet accounting were raised," said a former official at the Greek state accounting office.
"It's impossible they didn't know about these transactions."
George Alogoskoufis, who succeeded Mr Christodoulakis as finance minister, made a final stab at arranging a securitisation issue in 2005, of about €5bn tax arrears owed to the Greek government, with the help of Citi's investment arm.
Earlier that year Portugal had put together a similar issue backed by uncollected taxes, also arranged by Citi, which had been accepted by Eurostat.
"Ours didn't happen. The Commission said it was a one-off deficit reduction measure and we shouldn't do it. So we didn't," Mr Alogoskoufis recalled
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