Stournaras: Varoufakis’s strategy cost Greece 86 billion euros

Bank of Greece Governor Yannis Stournaras took a swipe at former finance minister Yanis Varoufakis on Thursday, saying his negotiating strategy, or lack thereof, in 2015, cost Greece 86 billion euros.

Speaking at a conference organized by the Hellenic Observatory of the London School of Economics, Stournaras, also a former finance minister under New Democracy, took aim at Varoufakis in response to a claim made at the same event by the former general secretary of the Finance Ministry, Nikos Theocharakis, that Greece had conducted brave negotiations.

“[Theocharakis] failed though to admit that the ‘brave’ negotiations that he and Yanis Varoufakis led, which led to the change of the name of the troika to ‘institutions’ and removed the troika from the ministries to the Hilton, also had a cost,” he said.

“The cost of course was 86 billion euros: That was the third memorandum and the capital controls that have been imposed after 45 billion euros of deposit outflows,” he said, deriding Theocharakis’s claims as “partisan.”