The law of silence and the advertisements of Piraeus Bank

A throwback to the story of journalist Stephen Gray of Reuters who two years ago he was reported in the "business" and the relations of Michael Sallas with the media, seeks a publication on the website of the magazine "Unfollow".

As was highlighted, in Greece nobody dares to write anything against the big banker...

The Greek Media are deafeningly silent, states the Unfollow, and they are just filling their pages with bank advertisement.
It is worth noting that despite the dramatic revelations of Newsbomb.gr - a few weeks ago - for the way in which the entire hospital "Henry Dunant" was granted for a controversial amount in a subsidiary of Piraeus Bank, nobody said anything.

Apart from some politicians who brought the matter to the House in the form of the current question, no agent of the state and no officer of Justice were interested to know what really happened.

On Sunday, November 9 the Unfollow wrote: "According to foreign media reports, of course, Piraeus Bank and the chairman of its board, Michalis Sallas, have engaged in business activities, which are, if anything, controversial. The Greek media however are deafeningly silent. At the same time when a matter of major importance to society is been concealed, the media fill their pages with bank advertisement ... ".

As Unfollow writes, is truly admirable the way in which the great Greek Media (blogs, TV channels or newspapers), are coordinated not only to highlight some news, but also to "bury" other news...

Unfollow uses as an example the case of Akis Tsochatzopoulos who accepted incredible bombardment of the media for the scandals in which he was involved (and rightly suffered such an attack), but also wonders, "what would happen if Akis was a banker? How would he be presented by the Media? ".

"Maybe the media would honor him with the same glaring silence that prevails today in all major media, on the works and days of the Board Chairman of Piraeus Bank, Michael Sallas and his family, as presented by the journalist Stephen Gray, of the famous English news agency Reuters.

S. Gray visited Greece several times as part of his inquiry into the operation of Greek banks. At the end of his research wrote the highly revealing article «A Greek banker's secret property deals», which says that M. Sallas, who now holds 1.5% of the shares, took the reins of Piraeus Bank 21 years ago (PASOK was then in the government and M. Sallas was an adviser of Papandreou), even before it was privatized. However, M. Sallas with the help of his wife Sophia Staikou, of his two children George and Myrto, and of some former executives of Piraeus, had set up a network of private investment companies that traded with Piraeus Bank through real estate transactions. These transactions, as evidenced by public documents and entries in the cadastral books, brought profits of million in Sallas family and partners, says the quote in the article of Unfollow and then it refers to the companies which are represented by the members of Sallas families, as revealed by the enquiry of Stephen Gray:

"Reuters examined publicly available data to try to establish independently if the companies linked to Piraeus existed and, if they did, what business they were in.
Greek companies, whether public or private, are not required to publicly register all their shareholders and there is no public register of directorships. But an inspection of the Greek government's official gazette, where company announcements and financial results are published, showed an extensive network of private interests connected both to Sallas and his family, and to several former senior executives at Piraeus.

In all, Reuters identified 11 companies in which members of the Sallas family have served on the board of directors, including four mentioned on the disputed document allegedly leaked by Agoulou. Sallas' wife Staikou served as a director on nine of them, including at least six as chairman, while Sallas' children Giorgos and Myrto each served on four. Sallas himself was not a director of any of them".

In another part, the article criticize the fact that none of the alleged famous journalists "who speak openly" and claim to be impartial, does not dare to say anything about the banker and they all stay apathetic and silent:

"All the great names of news", remained silent; from the bigwigs reporters who are constantly touting how impartial and independent they are, the traditional muckraking who supposedly are the fear and terror of corrupt politicians and the protector of the defenseless citizens, up to garrulous radio producers who "are not afraid of words".

Here it is worth mentioning that "mega channel" is excluded from the "tops" of news, since was never the case to indicate something wrong with Piraeus Bank, because Vardis Vardinogiannis except from Shareholder of "mega channel" is also the major shareholder of the Bank of Piraeus. Furthermore, one of the best-woman of the former central news anchor Olga Tremi, in her last marriage, was none other than the wife of the President of the Bank of Piraeus Sofia Staikou... ".
Both the article Unfollow, and the story of Stephen Gray clearly demonstrated that for some in Greece continues to apply the law of silence, called 'omertà'.