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The
Daily Gyro October 2, 2006 Greece’s Black Market Boosts GDP Just a thought: If your smuggling and money laundering is being reported, can it really be considered smuggling and money laundering? In a desperate attempt to stay above the EU’s deficit limits, Greece is adding the fruits of the country’s 60 billion dollar black market economy to its gross domestic product figures. "The revised GDP will include some money from illegal activities, such as money from cigarette and drinks smuggling, prostitution and money laundering," National Statistics Service (NSS) chief Manolis Kontopyrakis said in an interview. Greece’s economic output is estimated at 194 billion euros this year, and a 60 million euro boost is a major addition to this figure. This creative accounting reminded EU Headquarters of the creative accounting that allowed Greece to join the EU in the first place. Charles Grant, the director of the Centre for European Reform, said, "It is on the public record that the statistics used which allowed Greece to join the euro were exposed as false. I remember Jacques Delors [the former European commission president] saying in the early 1990s that Greece was not ready to join the EU in 1981." Just a thought: If your smuggling and money laundering is being reported, can it really be considered smuggling and money laundering?
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