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Wednesday, July 29, 2015

The Greek parliament must decide whether to prosecute Yanis Varoufakis for treason

Yanis Varoufakis, the former Greek finance minister, is being accused of treason, and his critics want to see him stand trial for causing "incalculable damage to the interests of the country." The Greek supreme court has passed two suits against Varoufakis, which were filed privately, on to parliament. One suit is from a Greek mayor, and the second is from Panayiotis Giannopoulos, a lawyer who wants to see Varoufakis tried for treason. According to the Greek newspaper Kathimerini, a third suit against Varoufakis is expected to be handed to parliament over his involvement in planning a potential parallel-payments system that could have been used to remove Greece from the eurozone. In a phone conversation with Lord Norman Lamont (former UK Conservative chancellor) and dozens of international investors, Varoufakis said an alternative payments system that he and a small group had been surreptitiously working on could have been used to "hack" his own ministry in the event of a banking crisis, and the same system could also bring back the drachma. It's unlikely that Varoufakis will actually be prosecuted — the suits filed simply can't be handled by Greece's judiciary because he's a former minister. Given the makeup of parliament, it seems very improbable that the lawmakers would want Varoufakis on trial. The former finance minister warned that this was coming when he spoke to Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, a journalist at The Telegraph, after the details of the telephone conversation were leaked. He also insisted that leaving the euro was never an aim of the system's establishment.Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: This animated map shows how the states voted in every presidential election since the Civil War


READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT uk.businessinsider.com