John Psaropoulos the Greek Freelance journalist and Director of Development for AKTO College in Athens has published an article on Aljazeera titled ‘Naming and shaming hits Greece’ highlighting how a new website dedicated to sharing stories on corruption in the public sector is creating a flutter. Psaropoulos states “…Greece’s first website dedicated to sharing stories of corruption in the public sector. The response has been impressive – after just two weeks online, the site has logged 40,000 visitors and highlighted more than $85,000 in bribes requested and paid. “What we’ve noticed is how incredible the bribes can be,” says Panos Louridas, one of several volunteers who built the website. “The funniest thing I saw was a hospital patient who had bribed staff to allow his wife to sleep in an empty second bed in his room. It was reported by a patient in an adjacent room.” Anyone can make an anonymous entry on teleiakaipavla.gr, loosely translatable as “Stop it. Period”. Names and dates are not mentioned, but institutions are – the top eight by number of entries are hospitals. …The site is a cast list of corrupt characters: the tax collector who blackmails a business, the surgeon who turns public healthcare into private practice, an official who wants a grigorosimo, or speed-up fee to avoid delays. Corruption is a big part of Greece’s unrecorded and untaxed economy, estimated by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development at roughly $90bn this year, dwarfing the deficit of $17bn. …”It is well known that the vast majority of tax collectors is deeply corrupt,” says a former minister who spoke on condition of anonymity. “This shop cannot be easily fixed. You have to break lots of eggs.”
Inspired by Aljazeera ow.ly/f5pmV image source Aljazeera video
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