The finance minister was personally responsible for approving the final figure. Before then, a committee of finance ministry and central bank officials came up with an annual budget deficit figure to be reported to Eurostat, based on numbers provided by the government statistics office. The revised figure was accepted without reservation by Eurostat, the Brussels statistical service.Д®lstat was established in August 2010 in an attempt to bring Greek statistics into line with EU standards. Under Mr Georgiou, the figure was revised upwards from 13.4 per cent to 15.8 per cent of gross domestic product - a record for a eurozone member state. The investigation follows a public dispute over the 2009 budget deficit figure. If convicted of вЂњbetraying the countryвЂ™s interestsвЂќ, he could face life imprisonment. Mr Georgiou is due to appear before GreeceвЂ™s prosecutor for financial crime on December 12 to answer the charges. Unfortunately, in Greece statistics is a combat sport.вЂќ вЂњWe would like to be a good, boring institution doing its job. вЂњI am being prosecuted for not cooking the books,вЂќ Mr Georgiou told the Financial Times. The head of Elstat, GreeceвЂ™s new independent statistics agency, faces an official criminal investigation for allegedly inflating the scale of the countryвЂ™s fiscal crisis and acting against the Greek national interest.ДЄndreas Georgiou, who worked at the International Monetary Fund for 20 years, was appointed in 2010 by agreement with the fund and the European Commission to clean up Greek statistics after years of official fudging by the finance ministry. And while I think the comparisons often made between the Greek and American fiscal situations are overstated (different debt-to-GDP ratios and trajectories, and critically very different arrangements with respect to central banks), in one way - namely the way in which Greece managed to enter into EMU, and to hide its debt to GDP ratio - the US could become more like Greece, if some in the political sphere have their way. IвЂ™ve been away in Europe for much of the last few weeks, and have heard plenty about the euro crisis (and US fiscal paralysis). Or, how political discourse in America is becoming more like that in Greece.

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