(Reuters) Greece’s government on Thursday asked the chief executive of its bank bailout fund to resign, after prosecutors ordered her to stand trial for her role in bad loans issued by defunct state lender Hellenic Postbank.
Anastasia Sakellariou has been chief executive of the Hellenic Financial Stability Fund (HFSF) since February 2013. She was charged last year with breach of trust for restructuring loans issued by the state lender from 2008 to 2012 and was told to stand trial on Wednesday, according to court officials.
Sakellariou’s resignation means the fund is now headless after its chairman, Christos Sclavounis, stepped down in March. The new leftist government of Alexis Tsipras has not yet replaced him.
“(The government) asked Mrs. Sakellariou today to hand in her resignation,” a government official told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The HFSF, funded from Greece’s 240 billion euro bailout by the European Union and International Monetary Fund, has recapitalised the country’s banking sector and also used its funds to wind down non-viable lenders.
The HFSF has said that, in 2012, Sakellariou was a member of a Hellenic Postbank committee that handled the restructuring of two loans.
HFSF has remaining funds of 10.9 billion euros in European Financial Stability Fund bonds, which were handed over to the European Stability Mechanism.
