European Union secretly provided money to Greece in the summer of 2011, while the country faced a crisis and its banks were threatened with bankruptcy. The planes from EU were secretly delivering money in cash, around €10 billion, according to the British newspaper Daily Mail. The money was transported to Greece by Boeing cargo aircraft with the logo of Maersk company. Some of the deliveries were made by Greek military aircraft.
Athens agreed to the terms of troika (EU, International Monetary Fund, and European Central Bank) to save the economy and its banking system, but asked for emergency help when banks were threatened because they have a sufficient amount of cash to pay for customer deposits. Due to the crisis, the Greek population began to withdraw money from their savings – 1-2 billion euros a day – according to some estimates – and to invest in real estate or other assets abroad , or to hide the money under the mattress.
If banks would have not been able to return the money to depositors, the crisis would have affected other eurozone countries . In order to maintain the stability of the euro, the European Union decided to print money and send it to Athens, where, with police cars and convoys, the money went to banks around the country. Greece itself can make euro coins and 10-euro banknotes. These bills were particularly good, for ATMs, but the banks needed higher denominations.
Much appreciated 500-euro banknote, the most valuable in the world, can only be printed by Bundesbank, the Austrian National Bank and the National Bank of Luxembourg.
The secret operation went without anyone noticing, and the value of bonds circulating in Greece doubled from €19 billion in 2009 to €40 billion in September 2011. By the summer of 2012, the total rose to €48 billion, of which the last ten billion, but maybe even more money , arrived in Greece on board of these secret flights.
Greece may need a third package of support, but it will not take additional measures for this crisis, said Greek Finance Minister, Yanis Sturnaras, adding that Greece will not need more than €10 billion in extra help.
So far, Greece has received a total of about €240 billion, and in July the IMF estimated that in the period 2014-2015 the country will need another €11 billion.
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