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ECB Wins Ruling to Deny Access to Secret Greek Swap Files
By Stephanie Bodoni, Elisa Martinuzzi & Gabi Thesing - Nov 29, 2012 12:05 PM GMT+0200
The European Central Bank will be allowed to keep private files showing how Greece used derivatives to hide its debt after defeating the first court challenge using the bloc’s freedom of information rules.
“Disclosure of those documents would have undermined the protection of the public interest so far as concerns the economic policy of the European Union and Greece,” the EU General Courtin Luxembourg said today, rejecting a request by Bloomberg News initially filed in August 2010.
Today’s ruling by three judges denies European taxpayers, on the hook for the cost of Greece’s 240 billion-euro ($311 billion) bailout, the opportunity to see whether EU officials knew of irregularities in Greece’s public accounts before they became public in 2009. The decision underscores the ECB’s lack of accountability as it expands its powers to become the euro area’s chief banking regulator, said Georg Erber, a research associate at the German Institute for Economic Research.
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ECB Wins Ruling to Deny Access to Secret Greek Swap Files
By Stephanie Bodoni, Elisa Martinuzzi & Gabi Thesing - Nov 29, 2012 12:05 PM GMT+0200
The European Central Bank will be allowed to keep private files showing how Greece used derivatives to hide its debt after defeating the first court challenge using the bloc’s freedom of information rules.
“Disclosure of those documents would have undermined the protection of the public interest so far as concerns the economic policy of the European Union and Greece,” the EU General Courtin Luxembourg said today, rejecting a request by Bloomberg News initially filed in August 2010.
Today’s ruling by three judges denies European taxpayers, on the hook for the cost of Greece’s 240 billion-euro ($311 billion) bailout, the opportunity to see whether EU officials knew of irregularities in Greece’s public accounts before they became public in 2009. The decision underscores the ECB’s lack of accountability as it expands its powers to become the euro area’s chief banking regulator, said Georg Erber, a research associate at the German Institute for Economic Research.
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ECB Withholding Secret Greek Swaps File Keeps Taxpayers in Dark
By Gabi Thesing, Elisa Martinuzzi & Alan Katz - Nov 30, 2012 2:01 AM GMT+0200
The European Central Bank’s court victory allowing it to withhold files showing how Greeceused derivatives to hide its debt leaves one of the region’s most powerful institutions free from public scrutiny as it assumes even more regulatory power.
The European Union’s General Court in Luxembourg ruled yesterday that the central bank was right to keep secret documents that would reveal how much the ECB knew about the true state of Greece’s accounts before the country needed a 240 billion-euro ($311 billion) taxpayer-funded rescue.
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