Foreign Policy
March 23, 2017
In September 2012, as the European economic crisis entered its third autumn, a plump Greek man from the port city of Patras came to Athens and put on a press conference at the President Hotel, a few blocks away from the Acropolis. Few in the audience had heard of him, but he brought an astonishing charge against the Greek state. “Artemis Sorras here,” he began mildly. “You should know that your government is in league against you. Now is the time for them to come clean with it!” Sorras went on to explain that he was the inheritor of bonds from the Bank of Anatolia, which had been acquired — and, it was generally thought, incorporated into — the National Bank of Greece in the 1920s. Nonsense, Sorras said. Anatolia’s bonds, far from expired, had in fact accrued tremendous value. Just two of them could more than pay off the Greek national debt. Sorras claimed to possess 40 — a fortune of 145 trillion euro.
Few took notice, at first. Greek government spokesmen dismissed the story; Athens talk radio mused how a man missing three teeth could possess more wealth than the rest of Greece combined. Sorras waved off the critics, doubled down on his claims — he said he also possessed bonds in Montreal-based banks and would be willing to bail out the personal debt of all his supporters, as well as that of Cyprus and Jefferson County, Alabama — and watched as a following of thousands gathered behind him, carrying him to the brink of being elected into Greece’s parliament. Now those thousands of followers are clinging desperately to the latest saga in the Sorras story: a warrant for his arrest stemming from an old case in which Sorras was caught illegally exchanging expired Kuwaiti dinars for his best man’s used luxury car. Summoned to court, Sorras fled — to the innards of the Peloponnese, some now claim; to Italy, allege others; to Central America, runs still another rumor. He remains at large.
More
No comments:
Post a Comment