标题: Corruptions in Greek Arms Purchase [打印本页] 作者: choi 时间: 2-9-2014 09:29 标题: Corruptions in Greek Arms Purchase Suzanne Daley, So Many Bribes, a Greek Official Can't Recall All. New York Times, Feb 8, 2014 (front page). www.nytimes.com/2014/02/08/world ... ant-recall-all.html
Quote:
"At the time, Mr [Antonis] Kantas, a wiry former military officer [and a deputy in the Defense Ministry's procurement department in the pertinent period], did not actually have the authority to decide much of anything on his own. But corruption was so rampant inside the Greek equivalent of the Pentagon that even a man of his relatively modest rank, he testified recently, was able to amass nearly $19 million in just five years on the job.
"The €600,000 * * * bought Mr Kantas’s silence on the tanks * * * Greece went ahead and bought 170 of the tanks for about $2.3 billion.Adding to the absurdity of the purchase (almost all of it on credit), the ministry bought virtually no ammunition for them, Mr [Constantinos P] Fraggos[, an expert on the Greek military,] said. It also bought fighter planes without electronic guidance systems and paid more than $4 billion for troubled, noisy submarines that are not yet finished and sit today virtually abandoned in a shipyard outside Athens.* * * Mr Kantas, he [Tasos Telloglou, an investigative reporter for the Greek daily newspaper Kathimerini] said, could not make deals, but had the power to disrupt deals because he was considered knowledgeable about weaponry.
Note:
(a) Greece "Defense Ministry makes a particularly rich target for [Greek graft] investigators because Greece went on a huge spending spree after 1996 when it got into a low-level skirmish with Turkey over the Imia islets in the Aegean Sea."
Imia/Kardak
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imia/Kardak
(a pair of two small uninhabited islets; territorial disputes)
(b) "The four [graft] prosecutors work in a windowless converted storage room with their desks jammed together. The unit’s chief, Eleni Raikou, appointed last August, paid for the installation of new wall outlets and light switches herself. But the team appears undeterred [by the government's unhelpfulness]."
For "outlet" or electrical outlet, see AC power plugs and sockets
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AC_power_plugs_and_sockets
(c) Mr Kantas "has described a tangle of bank accounts and offshore companies used to store his bribes, one named kourkoumpini, after a Greek sweet. When the sio-called Legarde list--a roster of Greeks with Swiss bank accounts--became news, Mr Kantas quickly moved most of his money to Singapore. At one point, he said, even he was astounded at the money offered. One dealer promised him '3 million dollars or euros,' to support the purchase of antitank missiles, a figure he could not believe. But the dealer came througfh"
(i) "Kourkoumpinia (fried phyllo nuggets in sweet syrup)"
I can not find a Greek English dictionary which includes "kourkoumpini[a]," so I do not know which is the root, which is plural form, etc. To see what it looks like, go to images.google.com.
(ii) For phyllo, see filo
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/filo
(The name derives from Greek filo "leaf", and may also be spelt phyllo or fillo)
(iii) Lagarde list
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagarde_list
(iv) come through www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/come through