Aqui do Alto Xingu, os índios transcrevem texto preliminar divulgado hoje pelo Comitê Especial, criado pelo Conhresso da Grécia, que está fazendo auditoria da dívida externa grega. Esperam os índios que a equipe do Paulo Nogueira possa sintetizar e colocar a matéria para o conhecimento e o debate dos leitores do blog.
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Executive Summary of the report from the Debt Truth Committee

17 June by Greek Debt Truth Committee

In June 2015 Greece stands at a crossroad of choosing between
furthering the failed macroeconomic adjustment programmes imposed by the
creditors or making a real change to break the chains of debt. Five
years since the economic adjustment programmes began, the country
remains deeply cemented in an economic, social, democratic and
ecological crisis. The black box of debt has remained closed, and until
now no authority, Greek or international, has sought to bring to light
the truth about how and why Greece was subjected to the Troika
regime. The debt, in whose name nothing has been spared, remains the
rule through which neoliberal adjustment is imposed, and the deepest and
longest recession experienced in Europe during peacetime.

There is an immediate need and social responsibility to address a
range of legal, social and economic issues that demand proper
consideration. In response, the Hellenic Parliament established the Truth Committee on Public Debt
in April 2015, mandating the investigation into the creation and growth
of public debt, the way and reasons for which debt was contracted, and
the impact that the conditionalities attached to the loans have had on
the economy and the population. The Truth Committee has a mandate to
raise awareness of issues pertaining to the Greek debt, both
domestically and internationally, and to formulate arguments and options
concerning the cancellation of the debt.

The research of the Committee presented in this preliminary report
sheds light on the fact that the entire adjustment programme, to which
Greece has been subjugated, was and remains a politically orientated
programme. The technical exercise surrounding macroeconomic variables
and debt projections, figures directly relating to people’s lives and
livelihoods, has enabled discussions around the debt to remain at a
technical level mainly revolving around the argument that the policies
imposed on Greece will improve its capacity to pay the debt back. The
facts presented in this report challenge this argument.

All the evidence we present in this report shows that Greece not only
does not have the ability to pay this debt, but also should not pay
this debt first and foremost because the debt emerging from the Troika’s
arrangements is a direct infringement on the fundamental human rights
of the residents of Greece. Hence, we came to the conclusion that Greece
should not pay this debt because it is illegal, illegitimate, and
odious.

It has also come to the understanding of the Committee that the
unsustainability of the Greek public debt was evident from the outset to
the international creditors, the Greek authorities, and the corporate
media. Yet, the Greek authorities, together with some other governments
in the EU, conspired against the restructuring of public debt in 2010 in
order to protect financial institutions. The corporate media hid the
truth from the public by depicting a situation in which the bailout was
argued to benefit Greece, whilst spinning a narrative intended to
portray the population as deservers of their own wrongdoings.

Bailout funds provided in both programmes of 2010 and 2012 have been
externally managed through complicated schemes, preventing any fiscal
autonomy. The use of the bailout money is strictly dictated by the
creditors, and so, it is revealing that less than 10% of these funds
have been destined to the government’s current expenditure.

This preliminary report presents a primary mapping out of the key
problems and issues associated with the public debt, and notes key legal
violations associated with the contracting of the debt; it also traces
out the legal foundations, on which unilateral suspension of the debt
payments can be based. The findings are presented in nine chapters
structured as follows:

Chapter 1, Debt before the Troika, analyses the growth of the
Greek public debt since the 1980s. It concludes that the increase in
debt was not due to excessive public spending, which in fact remained
lower than the public spending of other Eurozone countries, but rather
due to the payment of extremely high rates of interest to creditors, excessive and unjustified military spending, loss of tax revenues due to illicit capital outflows, state recapitalization of private banks, and the international imbalances created via the flaws in the design of the Monetary Union itself.

Adopting the euro led to a drastic increase of private debt in Greece
to which major European private banks as well as the Greek banks were
exposed. A growing banking crisis contributed to the Greek sovereign debt
crisis. George Papandreou’s government helped to present the elements
of a banking crisis as a sovereign debt crisis in 2009 by emphasizing
and boosting the public deficit and debt.

Chapter 2, Evolution of Greek public debt during 2010-2015,
concludes that the first loan agreement of 2010, aimed primarily to
rescue the Greek and other European private banks, and to allow the
banks to reduce their exposure to Greek government bonds.

Chapter 3, Greek public debt by creditor in 2015, presents the
contentious nature of Greece’s current debt, delineating the loans’ key
characteristics, which are further analysed in Chapter 8.

Chapter 4, Debt System Mechanism in Greece reveals the
mechanisms devised by the agreements that were implemented since May
2010. They created a substantial amount of new debt to bilateral
creditors and the European Financial Stability Fund (EFSF), whilst
generating abusive costs thus deepening the crisis further. The
mechanisms disclose how the majority of borrowed funds were transferred
directly to financial institutions. Rather than benefitting Greece, they
have accelerated the privatization process, through the use of financial instruments.

Chapter 5, Conditionalities against sustainability, presents
how the creditors imposed intrusive conditionalities attached to the
loan agreements, which led directly to the economic unviability and
unsustainability of debt. These conditionalities, on which the creditors
still insist, have not only contributed to lower GDP
as well as higher public borrowing, hence a higher public debt/GDP
making Greece’s debt more unsustainable, but also engineered dramatic
changes in the society, and caused a humanitarian crisis. The Greek
public debt can be considered as totally unsustainable at present.

Chapter 6, Impact of the “bailout programmes” on human rights,
concludes that the measures implemented under the “bailout programmes”
have directly affected living conditions of the people and violated
human rights, which Greece and its partners are obliged to respect,
protect and promote under domestic, regional and international law. The
drastic adjustments, imposed on the Greek economy and society as a
whole, have brought about a rapid deterioration of living standards, and
remain incompatible with social justice, social cohesion, democracy and
human rights.

Chapter 7, Legal issues surrounding the MOU and Loan Agreements,
argues there has been a breach of human rights obligations on the part
of Greece itself and the lenders, that is the Euro Area (Lender) Member
States, the European Commission, the European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund,
who imposed these measures on Greece. All these actors failed to assess
the human rights violations as an outcome of the policies they obliged
Greece to pursue, and also directly violated the Greek constitution by
effectively stripping Greece of most of its sovereign rights. The
agreements contain abusive clauses, effectively coercing Greece to
surrender significant aspects of its sovereignty. This is imprinted in
the choice of the English law as governing law for those agreements,
which facilitated the circumvention of the Greek Constitution and
international human rights obligations. Conflicts with human rights and
customary obligations, several indications of contracting parties acting
in bad faith, which together with the unconscionable character of the
agreements, render these agreements invalid.

Chapter 8, Assessment of the Debts as regards illegtimacy, odiousness, illegality, and unsustainability,
provides an assessment of the Greek public debt according to the
definitions regarding illegitimate, odious, illegal, and unsustainable
debt adopted by the Committee.

Chapter 8 concludes that the Greek public debt as of June 2015 is
unsustainable, since Greece is currently unable to service its debt
without seriously impairing its capacity to fulfill its basic human
rights obligations. Furthermore, for each creditor, the report provides
evidence of indicative cases of illegal, illegitimate and odious debts.

Debt to the IMF should be considered illegal since its
concession breached the IMF’s own statutes, and its conditions breached
the Greek Constitution, international customary law, and treaties to
which Greece is a party. It is also illegitimate, since conditions
included policy prescriptions that infringed human rights obligations.
Finally, it is odious since the IMF knew that the imposed measures were
undemocratic, ineffective, and would lead to serious violations of
socio-economic rights.

Debts to the ECB
should be considered illegal since the ECB over-stepped its mandate by
imposing the application of macroeconomic adjustment programs (e.g.
labour market deregulation) via its participation in the Troïka. Debts
to the ECB are also illegitimate and odious, since the principal raison
d’etre of the Securities Market Programme (SMP) was to serve the
interests of the financial institutions, allowing the major European and
Greek private banks to dispose of their Greek bonds.

The EFSF engages in cash-less loans which should be considered illegal
because Article 122(2) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European
Union (TFEU) was violated, and further they breach several
socio-economic rights and civil liberties. Moreover, the EFSF Framework
Agreement 2010 and the Master Financial Assistance Agreement of 2012
contain several abusive clauses revealing clear misconduct on the part
of the lender. The EFSF also acts against democratic principles,
rendering these particular debts illegitimate and odious.

The bilateral loans should be considered illegal since they
violate the procedure provided by the Greek constitution. The loans
involved clear misconduct by the lenders, and had conditions that
contravened law or public policy. Both EU law and international law were
breached in order to sideline human rights in the design of the
macroeconomic programmes. The bilateral loans are furthermore
illegitimate, since they were not used for the benefit of the
population, but merely enabled the private creditors of Greece to be
bailed out. Finally, the bilateral loans are odious since the lender
states and the European Commission knew of potential violations, but in
2010 and 2012 avoided to assess the human rights impacts of the
macroeconomic adjustment and fiscal consolidation that were the
conditions for the loans.

The debt to private creditors should be considered illegal
because private banks conducted themselves irresponsibly before the
Troika came into being, failing to observe due diligence, while some
private creditors such as hedge funds
also acted in bad faith. Parts of the debts to private banks and hedge
funds are illegitimate for the same reasons that they are illegal;
furthermore, Greek banks were illegitimately recapitalized by
tax-payers. Debts to private banks and hedge funds are odious, since
major private creditors were aware that these debts were not incurred in
the best interests of the population but rather for their own benefit.

The report comes to a close with some practical considerations. Chapter 9, Legal foundations for repudiation and suspension of the Greek sovereign debt,
presents the options concerning the cancellation of debt, and
especially the conditions under which a sovereign state can exercise the
right to unilateral act of repudiation or suspension of the payment of
debt under international law.

Several legal arguments permit a State to unilaterally repudiate its
illegal, odious, and illegitimate debt. In the Greek case, such a
unilateral act may be based on the following arguments: the bad faith of
the creditors that pushed Greece to violate national law and
international obligations related to human rights; preeminence of human
rights over agreements such as those signed by previous governments with
creditors or the Troika; coercion; unfair terms flagrantly violating
Greek sovereignty and violating the Constitution; and finally, the right
recognized in international law for a State to take countermeasures
against illegal acts by its creditors , which purposefully damage its
fiscal sovereignty, oblige it to assume odious, illegal and illegitimate
debt, violate economic self-determination and fundamental human rights.
As far as unsustainable debt is concerned, every state is legally
entitled to invoke necessity in exceptional situations in order to
safeguard those essential interests threatened by a grave and imminent
peril. In such a situation, the State may be dispensed from the
fulfilment of those international obligations that augment the peril, as
is the case with outstanding loan contracts. Finally, states have the
right to declare themselves unilaterally insolvent where the servicing
of their debt is unsustainable, in which case they commit no wrongful
act and hence bear no liability.

People’s dignity is worth more than illegal, illegitimate, odious and unsustainable debt

Having concluded a preliminary investigation, the Committee considers
that Greece has been and still is the victim of an attack premeditated
and organized by the International Monetary Fund, the European Central
Bank, and the European Commission. This violent, illegal, and immoral
mission aimed exclusively at shifting private debt onto the public
sector.

Making this preliminary report available to the Greek authorities and
the Greek people, the Committee considers to have fulfilled the first
part of its mission as defined in the decision of the President of
Parliament of 4 April 2015. The Committee hopes that the report will be a
useful tool for those who want to exit the destructive logic of
austerity and stand up for what is endangered today: human rights,
democracy, peoples’ dignity, and the future of generations to come.

In response to those who impose unjust measures, the Greek people
might invoke what Thucydides mentioned about the constitution of the
Athenian people: “As for the name, it is called a democracy, for the
administration is run with a view to the interests of the many, not of
the few” (Pericles’ Funeral Oration, in the speech from Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War).""