According to an exclusive story of defense news website Onalert.gr that has obtained the legal document, the case refers to the German companies ATLAS ELECTRONIC GmbH and RHEINMETALL DEFENCE ELECTRONIC GmbH:
According to the document:“the investigation is against [several names, one fully written, several others only with initials] and companies of German interests Atlas Electronic GmbH and Rheinmetall Electronic GmbH for having promised and distributed 62 million euro to Greek officials in the Defense Ministry so that they act in breach of their duties to assign specific defense programs to these companies and not to their competitors. “
The document has been issued by the Legal Council of the Greek State and states that the Greek government made a civil action statement to claim from each of the 12 Germans and one Greek the amount of €1,000,000 as “moral damage compensation.”
“The Greek government reserves the right to seek damage compensations from both the defendants and the two companies.”“The Legal Council asks the establishment of a committee consisting of officials with knowledge of the contracts to investigate the volume of the claims of the Greek government.”
Already in August 2013, German news agency DPA reported citing the spokesman of Bremen prosecutor that some 100 tax investigators raided the offices of Atlas Electronic and Rheinmetall Defence Electronic on suspicion to have bribed Greek officials and evaded taxes, adding that “the companies have paid some 9 million euros in bribes”. The report in German Manager Magazine refers to the corruption involved with the order and delivery of the four submarines Class 2014 Greece.
“The bribes payments continued up to 2007: Atlas Elektronik transferred €8.5 million to a mailbox company of Estathiou in London, Rheinmetall around € 9 million. In 2007 Rheinmetall buys the Atlas. At the end, Efstathiou received a total of €18 million. One half he used to bribe Greek officers and civil servants for the purchase of an air defense system. The other half he kept for himself, and he even paid taxes for it.But also the German armaments managers benefited from the deal. A small part from the money thought to bribe Greeks went back to the German managers of Atlas and Rheinmetall. Efstathiou transferred it on their private bank accounts.”
“In July 2014, Greek business consultant Alexandros Avatangelos rose against the “Süddeutsche Zeitung” a far more serious accusation: The Greek accession to the euro was part of a coupling business with the German armaments industry was. Shortly after Greece was admitted in the euro zone with by Gerhard Schröder consent, the government in Athens ordered 170 Leopard 2 tanks by manufacturer Krauss-Maffei Wegmann and for about 2.3 billion euros ordered submarines by the German HDW Werft (HDW ) in Kiel, now part of Thyssen-Krupp.Greece bought the submarines, “so that we come into the euro,” Avatangelos claimed in the SZ: “The submarine mission was important for HDW and thus for the elections campaign of the SPD in the north.“This massive criticism still stands unchallenged in the room. If one poses relevant questions to ex-Chancellor Schröder, one gets no respond.The article was posted on 2. February 2015. (full article in German STERN)