Bank of Crete

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Bank of Crete was a small Greek bank bought by George Koskotas, and they both shot to fame, or rather infamy, thanks to the bank's involvement in a major scandal in Greece in the late 1980s.

Specifically in November 1988, a shortfall of US$132 million was discovered in the Bank of Crete some months after bank chairman Koskotas, a Greek-American millionaire entrepreneur under investigation for large-scale financial crime, had fled the country. In the months that followed, alleged connections between Koskotas and the PASOK government, and even with prime minister Andreas Papandreou himself, brought the resignations of several ministers and demands for a vote of no confidence in the government.

Eventually the bank was privatised, and merged into other banking entities in Greece.