Losses of 83% from 2025 for pensioners, despite what the Mitsotakis government promised them before the election
20,000 pensioners of the National Bank are climbing their own calvary, who with laws passed by the Mitsotakis government and proposed by the so-called “supporter of insurance rights” Yannis Vroutsis are invited from the beginning of 2025 to live with their supplementary pension “cut” by 83%. All this is happening while society lives under the boot of “greed inflation” which from 2021 acts uncontrollably to the detriment of households and to the glory of tax-inducing GDP growth. These are all these pensioners who are members of a closed group of ex-bankers who paid 12.5% insurance contributions during their insurance life – the insurance contribution for the supplement is 6% – and now they are “thrown” into poverty in the middle of the cost of living crisis imposed by the Mitsotakis government with its attachment to profiteering.
This is the visible tip of the iceberg that may be frightening in how the Greek state has “behaved” with workers’ insurance contributions, from the infamous offshore loans of the 1960s to the structured bonds of the Karamanlis government in 2007-08, but there is also the dark side of the iceberg concerning the way that the Kyriakos Mitsotakis stole the vote of millions of citizens by cheating them.
What was Vroutsis asking them in 2017
It was November 22, 2017, when the later minister G. Vroutsis, in his capacity as the Labor Department head of the ND, at the general meeting of the NGE Pensioners Association, amid warm applause, said verbatim: “So we say and I close! Our main position. Do NOT stop the payment of pension benefits (LEPETE) to employees and pensioners. End of story. So simple, so simple, so simple.”
What did the same person do when Mr. Mitsotakis took over the government of the country? With an amendment and in order to save, as he has mentioned in the Parliament, the National Bank, at the expense of the Supplementary Insurance branch of the EFKA, he proposed the full inclusion of NBG employees and pensioners in the Unified Fund for Supplementary Insurance and Lump-sum Benefits (ETEAEP). with maintenance of the already paid amount of the supplementary pension, but until 31.12.24 – then comes a new “axe” of the order of 33% which will be added to a previous reduction of 50%! As if he was not the same person who, two and a half years before the amendment was passed, representing the ND, proclaimed amid applause: “Don’t stop the payment of the pension benefit (LEPETE) to the workers and pensioners”!
“So simple, so simple, so simple” so we stole your vote, we became the government and now, amidst our self-imposed profiteering inflation, we’re cutting 83% of your supplementary pension. We are doing all this to “save” the National Bank, which is brutally and uncontrollably profiting from deposit and loan interest rates, while it has brutally seized the contribution money without giving an account.
How did the problem arise?
Since 1949, the National Bank of Greece Personal Recovery Account (LEPETE) has been established. For 68 years now, National Bank employees paid increased contributions in order to enjoy a larger supplementary pension after the end of their working life – paid by the bank itself. This money was managed by the National Bank without giving an account. However, in December 2017, it decided to stop the payment of the subsidy (LEPETE) paid since 1949. In practice, she transferred the problem she created to the state, i.e. to the Greek taxpayers and insured persons.
In order to find a solution to the problem, the then Tsipras government, in May 2019, legislated the inclusion in the then ETEAEP of LEPETE with the payment of 45-50% of the supplementary pension as it was paid until November 2017, but now as a supplementary pension. At the same time, the mandatory payment by the National Bank of 40 million euros per year was established against the 120 million euros it paid to pay pensions.
However, in March 2020 the “promoter” G. Vroutsis of “so simple, so simple, so simple” legislated article 63 (law 4680/2020) which defined the full integration of NGE employees and pensioners into ETEAEP, with maintenance of the already paid amount of the supplementary pension, but until 31.12.24. From January 2025, there will be a further reduction of 33% in the supplementary pension of approximately 18,000 pensioners.
In favor of the National at the expense of the insurance
With all of this, NBG is the direct beneficiary and the cost goes to society through the burden of EFKA. If the country’s prosecutors did not see “unspecified amounts” in ministers’ accounts to file criminal cases, we would be in front of a huge scandal of embezzlement of public money.
In more detail, the payments that National Bank had to pay under the SYRIZA law (Article 24 of Law 4618/2019) amounted (in the five-year period 2020-24) to 200 million euros. EFKA, based on the Report of the General State Accounts Office, for the years 2020-23 would pay 58 million euros.
However, the “voracious appetite” for damage of the Greek public of the National Bank with what the Mitsotakis government voted in March 2020 in the midst of a pandemic causes a total damage (2020-24) of 27 million euros to the finances of EFKA.
The actual payments of the NBG, based on what the ND voted for, amount to 173 million euros and are analyzed as follows:
For 2020, 37 million euros
For 2021, 35 million euros
For 2022, 35 million euros
For 2023 33 million
For 2024 approximately 33 million
So, in relation to what SYRIZA had instituted (the EIB would pay a total of 200 million euros in the five-year period 2020-24), there is a benefit of the EIB – and a corresponding burden on the insurance system – of the order of 27 million euros.
In addition to these, NGE also benefits due to the reduction from 1.6.19 of the percentage of the insurance contribution to LEPETE (12.5%) with the payment of a 6% contribution to ETEAEP. This is about 4,000 working bank employees whose insurance premiums have been reduced – with a corresponding reduction in EFKA income. The NBG’s “profit” at the expense of the insurance system amounts to approximately 9 million euros per year, which means a cumulative loss of 45 million euros over the five years.
“Who is the island” Kerameos
Ten days have already passed since the delivery of a letter by the anxious pensioners to the competent Minister of Labor and Social Security, but there is radio silence. Niki Kerameos does not hesitate to contact these people who are fighting to keep their supplementary pension from shrinking. In particular, characterizing the government’s wretched tactics against them as events that should be included in the Guinness Book of Records (Guinness World Records) and describing the taunt of G. Vroutsis, they request a meeting with her and not with mid-level officials of the Ministry of Labor and Social Security . “The great mockery is that Mr. Vroutsis himself, shortly before the elections and taking over the ministry, considered what we get today to be little and in a stentorian voice he “clarified” to over 2,000 of our colleagues at the “Titania” hotel, the position of the N. Democracy: “The Bank must give you the entire subsidy, as before. End of story!”. It turned out that the ax of 33% intervened before the full stop…” they also report on this matter, but N. Kerameos does not mean to answer them.
The €1 billion scandal and the cover-up
To get to 2017, when National Bank also decided to stop funding, 68 years have passed since the establishment of the ETB Personal Relief Account (LEPETE) which was established in 1949. It was an interest-bearing joint property account within National Bank into which contributions were paid the employees and the bank for the purpose of receiving supplementary pension when someone left working life.
However, in recent decades there has been a continuous disintegration of the labor of bank employees, which culminated in the three recapitalizations of the National Bank, after 2008, as a result of the criminal choices of its management, for which Greek society was “punished” and no one was held accountable.
In order to understand the scope of the criminal choices of the respective administrations of the National Bank – they were essentially appointed by the respective PASOK or ND governments – it is sufficient to mention what is written in the 2009 Balance Sheet Overview Report and Administrative Use Report of LEPETE: “due to the successive years of concentration of the portfolio in NBG shares and the prolonged decline in share prices on the Athens Stock Exchange, a significant liquidity problem has been created”.
Up until 2009, administrations were “cannibalizing” bankers’ contribution money to play speculative stock market games and receive productivity bonuses! It is characteristic of this that with the collusion of the governments and the judiciary, the National Bank stubbornly refuses to open the special purpose account (LEPETE), so that the movements can be checked by independent chartered accountants, in order to find the culprits of these criminal choices at the expense of the contributions of thousands of bank employees.
Instead and under the pretext of rescuing it, in 2017 the then management of NGE handed over the problem to the state, asking to save it since LEPETE was now in deficit!
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