Merkel Slams Greek ‘Scandal’ as Goldman Role Examined

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said it would be a “scandal” if banks helped Greece massage its budget, as European officials investigate Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s role in Greek efforts to conceal the size of its deficit.

“It’s a scandal if it turned out that the same banks that brought us to the brink of the abyss helped fake the statistics,” Merkel said in a speech in northern Germany late yesterday, without naming Goldman Sachs directly. Greece “falsified statistics for years.”

Merkel’s comments came as her government questioned whether Goldman Sachs, Wall Street’s most-profitable securities firm, helped Greece hide its deficit as it struggled to comply with European Union limits. Michael Meister, financial affairs spokesman for Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union, said Feb. 15 that a swap agreement managed by New York-based Goldman Sachs in 2002 “broke the spirit of the Maastricht Treaty.”

Bloomberg