No agreement for 3-5 bln euro 'advance' to Greece, Putin's spokesman says
There was never any agreement to give Greece an advance of 3-5 billion euros from the anticipated profits of the Greek natural gas pipeline, the Russian president's press spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on the radio station 'Business FM' on Saturday.
He denied a relevant report in "Spiegel" and pointed out that Russian President Vladimir Putin had made it clear during a joint press conference with Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras that no one had asked Russia for financial assistance.
Commenting on the agreement on the pipeline, due to be signed in Athens next week, he said the two sides had agreed that there would be meetings on the level of technical experts to hammer out the details of energy cooperation and stressed that Russia had not promised financial assistance "because nobody asked for it".
During the press conference with Tsipras on April 8, Putin had referred to the possibility of "situations arising that will allow us not just to finance these or other plans that we discussed together today but also to resolve issues of credit relations on a broader framework during the implementation of these plans."
Among others, he suggested that a major project bringing revenues to Greece could also mean such revenues might be used to repay the loans and that "we are not talking about assistance but cooperation, among others in the financial sector, in connection with specific major projects."
Government sources in Moscow said the talks on the pipeline established the possibility of financing a major project, within the framework of EU laws. They said the cost of construction was estimated at 2.0 billion euros and the operation of the pipeline would bring the Greek state profits of up to 500 million euros a year, while it was expected to begin operating in 2019.
Δημοφιλείς Ειδήσεις
