I don’t know who was the dumber of the two: the Greek banker apparently rushing to spend 100 million big ones on a London pad, or the American woman who fell off a cliff in Alaska while busy texting? Both dummies survived, which goes to show that the Almighty must have a weakness for the desperate. Lavrentis Lavrentiadis is the unusually named banker now under investigation in Greece for possible money laundering. It’s not unknown for Greeks to cheat on their taxes and purchase houses overseas, though the Russians are much better at it than the Greeks or even the Chinese. London is one big laundry machine; in fact, it should change its name and simply call itself Laundry.
Now please don’t ask me about the Alaskan. All I know is that she broke some bones after falling more than 100 feet off a cliff while texting. Apparently she continued to text while flying downwards. Nothing that people who text do surprises me, except that it took so long for someone to fall off a cliff while texting. Bankers laundering money is another matter altogether. The Greek house hunter never made a London purchase in the spring of 2011 because there were so many crooks ahead of him. Within months his bank — Proton Bank — was seized by the government, a bit of theatre of the absurd, government officials of the Greek persuasion not exactly unknown in London’s real estate markets.
Lavrentiadis has denied the accusations of money laundering. What has emerged from the mess is that the British financial authorities — whatever that means — have handed over a detailed list of about 400 Greeks who have bought and sold London properties since 2009. Whew! Most Greek ship owners (is there any other kind?) I know have had homes in London since the Forties, and even the poor little Greek boy got his first house in London town back in 1971. (I sold my last one in Cadogan Square in 2004, when I looked around me and found only Turks, Arabs and Russians as my neighbours.) Apparently the Greek list is closely guarded by the Greek government and it is being examined by officials. I say good luck. Catching tax cheats in the birthplace of electrolysis is like finding honest men in Beirut. Extremely rare.
Ship owners have owned houses in London since time immemorial. That’s where all the markets were located and where contracts were signed. There were Greek ship owners in London even while Greece did not exist but was under the Ottoman yoke. Many of them, including Manto Mavrogenous, gave away their wealth in the struggle for independence. Miaoulis and Canaris, two heroes of the revolution, were ship owners first and admirals second. During the last world war, Greek industrialists headed by my father gave away millions to the starving population, and immediately after it continually raised funds for the poor. I remember one ship owner refusing to give money at my father’s request and the old man saying to him, ‘You need it more than the poor do, your feet smell.’
But that was then. Greed got the better of the Greeks as successive governments stole the little wealth the country had. After my father’s factories were blown up during the communist uprising of Christmas ’44, the only way of coming back was by going west. To America, where he bought ships that the international community protected from communist sabotage. Stick to the sea, he used to tell me, it’s safer out there. But he rebuilt his factories and businesses in Greece and continued to live there until his death in 1989. My old man knew how to play the Greek game. I never bothered to learn because I never liked the rules. Nor did so many of my Greek friends who chose to live outside and only go there during the summer.
As I write, with a three-party coalition government supposedly out to catch the crooks, the president of the Greek Parliament, once the seat of my uncle, is under investigation for tax evasion. Evangelos Meimarakis, a very rich man having saved his meagre salary, has of course denied all charges. After his announcement there was a Pinteresque silence, then people began to laugh, the laughter spilling out into the wide boulevards, with people falling over themselves holding their ribs. It was mass hysteria for a while, as if some Turk had poisoned the water supply with LSD. Thousands had to be hospitalised from excessive laughter. Hookers were laughing too hard to perform, and public transport came to a halt. Taxi drivers were seen stopping their cars, getting out and collapsing in hysterical laughter. Someone had the bright idea of erecting a sign just beneath the Parthenon, ‘INNOCENT’, like the one that reads Hollywood over La-La land. The cops stopped laughing long enough to stop it. The Acropolis rock is sacred, the police announced. It was the only truth uttered that day.
Greece cannot function as a modern economy unless markets are freed, corruption rooted out and cartels and favouritism eliminated. But who will do this? The crooks who are in parliament already? Premier Samaras talks a good battle but he has spent his life in politics, Greek politics, and has never had a job outside politics. His hands are as dirty as the rest and there are few among the 300 in Parliament whose hands are not. But the Germans are the bad guys. Down with Germany.
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