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Germany owes Greece 278.7 bln euros in WWII reparations: Greek deputy FinMin

Xinhua, April 7, 2015 Adjust font size:

Germany owes Greece about 278.7 billion euros (about 307 billion U.S. dollars) in reparations for WWII, Greek Deputy Finance Minister Dimitris Mardas said on Monday, addressing a special parliamentary committee set up to seek the routes of Greece's current debt crisis.

The Greek official cited "reliable estimates" made by Greece's General Accounting Office, which were based on archives examined by experts.

According to Athens, Germany owes today at least 10.3 billion euros for the forced loan granted to Nazi forces at the time and 268.4 billion euros for damages in infrastructure and compensations to individuals.

Mardas noted that in 1946 in Paris the reparations were estimated at about 341.2 billion U.S. dollars.

The Greek Parliament's so-called Debt Truth Committee has been set up in March with an initiative of the Parliament's Speaker Zoe Constantopoulou to investigate the causes of the debt crisis which since 2010 has led Greece at the brink of bankruptcy.

Greece's newly elected Leftist government has revived an old campaign to seek war reparations from Berlin for WWII Nazi crimes and an occupation loan.

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, who raised the issue also during his recent visit to Berlin for talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, has stressed that it was not connected to the ongoing negotiations with creditors on the resolution of the Greek debt crisis and Germany's insistence that Athens sticks to a painful fiscal adjustment and reform drive.

However, statements on WWII reparations made by Greek cabinet ministers in recent weeks which have been dismissed as "inflammatory" by the German government, have indirectly linked the two issues.

For Berlin the case has closed from 1960 when Germany paid to Greece about 60 million euros.

Athens argues that this sum covered only some compensation for victims of Nazi crimes, but not for the destruction on Greece's economy during the occupation. (1 euro = 1.10 U.S. dollars) Endit