Από το 2012 τον κράζει το Reuters, και αυτός… χτενίζεται. 
«Το ελληνικό τραπεζικό σύστημα είναι ασφαλές και θωρακισμένο» δηλώνει ο πρόεδρος του ΔΣ της Τράπεζας Πειραιώς Σαλλας με αφορμή την ανακοίνωση των αποτελεσμάτων της τράπεζας για το 2012, γράφουν ότι διαμορφώθηκαν στα 513 εκατ. ευρώ το 2012 οι ζημίες του ομίλου της Τράπεζας Πειραιώς, αλλά αυτός απτόητος συνεχίζει να αγοράζει με.. δανεικά τράπεζες.
«Η Τράπεζα Πειραιώς, με την απορρόφηση μπλα-μπλα-μπλα των δραστηριοτήτων των τριών κυπριακών τραπεζών στην Ελλάδα, συμμετέχει ενεργά στην αναδιάρθρωση και σταθεροποίηση του ελληνικού τραπεζικού συστήματος και συμβάλλει στην προσπάθεια ανασυγκρότησης της ελληνικής οικονομίας.
Ποιας ανασυγκρότησης ρε ξεφτίλα; Της …τρύπιας τσέπης σου θέλεις να πεις. Με τον τρόπο αυτό διασφαλίζουμε τους καταθέτες, τους πελάτες και τους εργαζόμενους των τριών κυπριακών τραπεζών στην Ελλάδα, και παράλληλα προχωρούμε από καλύτερη θέση για τους μετόχους μας στην επικείμενη ανακεφαλαιοποίηση της Τράπεζας Πειραιώς» δήλωσε .
Εμείς πάντως του αφιερώνουμε το αναπάντητο δημοσίευμα από το 2012 του Reuters που έφερνε το φως της δημοσιότητας τα «κλεπτοπαιχνίδια» Σάλλα – Βγενόπουλου. Δεν συγκινήθηκε κανείς από τις αποκαλύψεις, δεν διαψεύστηκαν τα έγγραφα του Reuters και δεν μηνύθηκε το πρακτορείο όπως είχε γίνει προγενέστερα.
The
chairman of one of Greece's largest banks and his family took out loans
totaling more than 100 million euros to finance an undisclosed stake in
the bank, according to audit documents seen by Reuters.
Offshore
companies owned by Michael Sallas and his two children paid for shares
in the Piraeus Bank, the country's fourth-biggest, by borrowing money
from a rival bank.
Together
the shares make the Sallas family the largest shareholder in Piraeus,
with a combined stake of over 6 percent. The purchase of these shares
has not been declared to the Athens stock exchange by Piraeus.
The
loans to Sallas, who was executive chairman of Piraeus Bank until last
month and remains its non-executive chairman, raise new questions about
the stability and supervision of the Greek financial system at a time
when European taxpayers and the International Monetary Fund are bailing
out its banks with more than 30 billion euros.
The
IMF had no comment on the issue, and a spokesman for the Bank of Greece
declined to comment on Sallas's holdings in Piraeus, citing banking
confidentiality guidelines. "Our supervision department cannot comment
on specific prudential data available or actions taken with regard to
any specific bank as such information is confidential," he said.
According
to audit reports seen by Reuters, most of the money borrowed by
companies linked to Sallas was used to buy shares in a Piraeus Bank
rights issue in January 2011. The issue was designed to strengthen
Piraeus's capital base.
The
disclosure highlights concerns that Greek banks have been borrowing
money from each other and using it to meet recapitalization
requirements, but not making that clear.
"This
(the Greek financial system) is a closed circuit, operating as a system
of power with no transparency and effective supervision," said Louka
Katseli, professor of economics at the University of Athens and former
Greek minister of economy. "Through triangle deals between banks,
businessmen and other banks, capitalization requirements were fulfilled
without new money injected."
Piraeus
Bank and Sallas declined to answer specific questions for this story,
but offered an interview later this month. On Sunday Sallas issued a
statement to the Greek media attacking Reuters and accusing the news
agency of "slandering" and "undermining" the bank.
"It
is not the first time that I or Piraeus Bank have been the target of
attacks," the statement said. "What should be of concern to all of us in
the present situation is the safety and the further strengthening of
our banking system."
Reuters
Global Editor for Ethics and Standards Alix M. Freedman said: "Our
coverage of Piraeus and of the Greek banking system has been accurate
and fair to every person and institution involved."
In
April, a Reuters investigation found that Piraeus had failed to tell
shareholders it had rented expensive properties from a network of
private companies run by the Sallas family. The bank has sued Reuters
for defamation over the story, claiming 50 million euros in damages.
Reuters
has also reported allegations of mismanagement at the Proton Bank and
at a Cyprus-based bank formerly known as the Marfin Popular Bank that
operates in Greece. Proton's former president and major shareholder,
Lavrentis Lavrentiadis, has vigorously denied allegations that he used
the bank to loan himself and associates hundreds of millions of euros.
Andreas
Vgenopoulos, former chairman of Marfin Popular Bank, now renamed Cyprus
Popular Bank, has denied conflicts of interest alleged by a Greek
parliamentary inquiry and Cypriot lawmakers.
It
was Marfin's largest then Greek subsidiary, the Marfin-Egnatia Bank
(MEB), that issued the loans to the Sallas family. According to two
audit reports on Marfin, the loans were ranked among its riskiest
exposures, judged both by their shortfall in collateral, which is mainly
Piraeus shares, and risk of future losses to the bank.
The
two audit reports, from January and May this year, were shown to
Reuters by separate and unconnected sources. They were authenticated in
interviews with banking sources and officials in Greece and Cyprus.
Internal
Marfin auditors said executives at MEB had "failed to act in the best
interests of the bank" by granting successive loans to Sallas to buy his
own bank shares. By 2011 his investment in those shares, the auditors
found, had "dire prospects" and had been made through special purpose
vehicles and with no personal guarantees.
The
auditors wrote: "Worth noting is that loan approval took place at a
time when it was all but clear that the outlook for the Greek banking
sector and by extension for Piraeus stock was deeply negative." The
loans were issued "when our Bank was already in a precarious liquidity
situation".
SHARE PURCHASES
According
to the records, Sallas first obtained a loan agreement from MEB in May
2009. A facility for up to 150 million euros was signed off by the
Marfin group's Vgenopoulos, then executive vice-chairman. A spokesman
for Vgenopoulos and Efthymios Bouloutas, the bank's chief executive at
the time, declined to comment on the loans due to "banking secrecy legal
obligations."
By
January last year, according to the first audit report, MEB loans to
Sallas companies amounted to 48 million euros. But that month, "another
65 million was used" to purchase shares in Piraeus's 800-million-euro
rights issue.
The
Sallas family bought their shares via three separate Cyprus-based
companies, according to both audit reports. The purchase brought the
family's total loans to 113 million euros, secured on collateral
estimated to be worth less than 30 million euros, based on Piraeus's
recent share price.
The
three Cyprus-based companies are Shent Enterprises, which is owned by
Sallas and which has 45 million euros in outstanding loans to MEB;
Benidver Enterprises, which has 22 million in loans; and KAEO
Enterprises, which has 46 million in loans.
Records
at Cyprus' corporate registry show that both Benidver and KAEO were
owned by Michael Sallas personally until a month before Piraeus's rights
issue.
Ownership
was switched to two Greek companies linked to the family and in turn
owned by a single Cyprus company called Avecmac, whose shareholders are
anonymous. But MEB audit documents from 2012 seen by Reuters record
Benidver as owned by Sallas' daughter Myrto and KAEO as owned by Sallas'
son George.
Avecmac,
contacted through its representative in Cyprus, did not respond to
requests for comment. Myrto Sallas declined to comment; George Sallas
could not be reached.
FAMILY HOLDINGS
Exactly
how many shares Sallas and his family bought in Piraeus last January,
and in whose name they were registered, is not clear.
Some
indication comes from the number of Piraeus shares pledged by the
Sallas companies as collateral for the loans. Those rose by 62 million
after the rights issue, bringing the total number of Piraeus shares
pledged as collateral to more than 66 million, or around 6 percent of
ordinary stock in the bank.
In
filings to the stock exchange and in other declarations, Sallas has
said he owns around 16 million shares in his name, as well as a total of
around 16 million purchased through Shent Enterprises. He has declared
no share purchases by his children.
Under
Greek and European law, any holding in a public company of more than 5
per cent should be announced publicly. Greek law also requires all
company executives "and persons closely associated with them" to make
all share transactions public.
Marfin's auditors, according to their report, regard loans to Sallas and his family as "connected."
But
Kostas Botopoulos, chairman of Greece's Capital Market Commission,
which regulates the country's public companies, said the decision of who
to define as a "person closely associated" was "considered on an ad hoc
basis." There is no specific ruling on whether a spouse or children
would fall in that category, he said.
Piraeus
Bank released a statement saying the bank would not answer the detailed
questions sent to Sallas and the bank due to "civil and criminal cases"
between Piraeus and Reuters, and between the bank and a former Piraeus
employee "charged with serious crimes." Piraeus has previously said the
former employee had defamed the bank.
"The
Bank will refute the allegations in court," the statement said. "To do
otherwise would clearly be in contempt of the proceedings. In the
interest of transparency, to defend its reputation and reassure its
shareholders, the Bank has provided the Bank of Greece with all the
relevant information."
CAPITAL BASE
The
loans to investors in the Piraeus rights issue highlight a bigger
concern in the Greek banking sector. Piraeus issued more shares last
year to strengthen its capital base, enabling it to score higher in
European bank stress tests.
The
successful issue, Sallas said at the time, showed "a sign of confidence
in Piraeus Bank, the Greek banking system and of course the prospects
of the Greek economy."
But Sallas did not make public the loans he and other shareholders had taken out to help make the rights issue a success.
In
all, according to loans disclosed so far, nearly one-fifth of the new
capital in Piraeus was raised with financing from other Greek banks -
including another 20 million euros or so loaned by MEB to investors, and
70 million euros loaned by the Proton Bank. The Proton loans went
through offshore companies in tax havens such as the Cayman Islands.
Proton
has since been nationalized after Greece's money-laundering authority
alleged fraud and embezzlement in cases unrelated to Piraeus or MEB.
According
to several European banking and accounting experts, if banks loan money
to finance major stakes in other banks, then the industry's regulator,
in this case the Bank of Greece, should deduct the same amount from the
capital the lending bank claims to hold.
Dr
Peter Hahn, a fellow at London's Cass Business School and an adviser to
the UK Financial Services Authority, said that a loan scheme whose only
means of repayment was shares in another bank should, under
international rules, be treated as if the lending bank was directly
purchasing shares in the other bank. "The equity in the lending bank
would otherwise be supporting risk of loss in both banks," he said.
Hans-Peter
Burghof, a professor of banking and finance at the University of
Hohenheim, Germany, said that billions of euros had been given to the
Greek banking system without adequate supervision of the sector. "It's
our money and it has been given without controls. It's a disaster," he
said.
If
banks lent to finance each other's shares, he said, then "this way you
can produce as much equity as you like and make banks as big as you
like. It is not real equity." He likened it to "a kind of Ponzi scheme."
Burghof
said that, whether deemed to be covered by regulations or not, if bank
equity was raised in this way, the banks and companies involved should
be treated as a consolidated whole. "If the regulator finds out (about
loans from one bank to finance share purchases in another), he should
discount this equity," he said.
The
European Banking Authority, which is meant to safeguard the stability
of the financial system and transparency of markets, generally agreed
with that analysis, though a spokeswoman said there may be exceptions in
the case, say, of a "financial assistance operation".
There
is no indication in their financial statements that either Proton or
Marfin made deductions in their capital levels after their loans for
Piraeus shares.
In
a statement the Bank of Greece said it does not ordinarily require
capital deductions from banks that lend money for the purchase of shares
in other unconnected banks.
"European
Union law does not prohibit granting loans to an entity (person or
organization) in order to participate in a share capital increase of
another credit institution," the bank said. Such a deduction from
regulatory capital would only take place if a bank granted loans to buy
its own shares, it said.
It
added that the disclosure of major stakes (over 5%) in a public company
was "indeed a requirement on the stakeholder". But this was policed by
the Capital Market Commission, not the Bank of Greece.
The
CMC said that shareholders, in calculating whether they hold 5% or
more, should aggregate holdings if they have an agreement to act
together.
(Edited by Richard Woods, Simon Robinson and Mike Williams)
http://eleftheriskepsii.blogspot.gr/2013/03/2012-reuters.html
