Couple quits Greek gov’t posts in housing allowance scandal
Greece’s economy minister has submitted his resignation to Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, hours after his wife quit a junior ministerial post after it was revealed that she received housing allowances from the cash-stripped government despite considerable personal wealth.
“Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has accepted the resignation of Economy Minister Dimitri Papadimitriou,” the prime minister’s office said in a statement on Tuesday.
On Monday, Papadimitriou’s wife, Rania Antonopoulos, resigned as the junior labor minister over revelations by pro-opposition daily Eleftheros Typos last week that she had requested a 1,000-euro (1,200-dollar) monthly housing stipend available to government members whose main residences are outside Athens despite extensive personal wealth.
The report sparked outrage in the country, which is grappling with a debt crisis and where the government has imposed harsh austerity measures on Greek citizens. Athens has been reliant on international bailouts since 2010 after its economy crashed.
Papadimitriou and his wife are senior scholars at the New York-based Levy Economics Institute of Bard College and have a permanent home in the US.
When she took office in 2015, Antonopoulos declared stocks worth 340,000 dollars and an annual income of 86,000 dollars while her husband declared a portfolio of some 2.7 million dollars and an income of over 450,000 dollars.
Antonopoulos said she had received 23,000 euros (28,000 dollars) over two years, and was technically within her rights to do so.
“It was never my intention to insult the Greek people. I understand that my financial standing, as reflected in my tax declaration, has increased public outrage,” however, she said in a statement.
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