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Managing Director of International Monetary Fund (IMF) Christine Lagarde has ordered the institution's staff in Greece to temporarily leave the Greek capital, reports the German magazine Der Spiegel. According to it, the reason for this is the slow progress in the negotiations of the IMF's representatives with the Greek government.

The article in Der Spiegel stresses that the relations between the cabinet and the members of the IMF's expert teams are bad. Greece’s representative at the meetings of the Euro Working Group even called the representatives of the institutions, creditors, "totally incompetent".

GRReporter recalls that Bulgarian Iva Petrova is the head of the IMF's technical team in Athens.

In this atmosphere, Athens has to pay part of the loan to the IMF or about 450 million euro on 9 April. Earlier today, Deputy Minister of Finance Dimitris Mardas said, "The aim of the government is to pay the obligations on time. We are ready to pay on 9 April."

Another article of the German magazine states that Greece must repay loans amounting to 6 billion euro by mid-May. "Despite this, the negotiations with the creditors are not progressing, but bankruptcy in the country itself has already begun. The state is postponing payments and is not making them at all in some cases (...) The government is collecting money from wherever it can, and because there is not enough money to pay off the loans it is using even resources that are not available to it in fact. An example of this is the order to the state organization for school buildings to open an account in the Bank of Greece and deposit in it the 70-80 million euro that are intended for the construction and maintenance of schools."

The article in Der Spiegel states that Greece is in a state of imminent bankruptcy. "But how long can this continue? For weeks, the Greek Government has been seeking fresh money from its European partners to pay at least its obligations to June. However, negotiations are not progressing."

The text notes that on 12 May, Greece will have to repay another loan from the IMF to the amount of 770 million euro. "According to observers, if it does not get any help by then at the latest, everything will end. Then Greece will go bankrupt and formally, its reputation will be destroyed."

Meanwhile, Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades said that his country was prepared for the probability of Greece leaving the euro zone as well as for its consequences, adding however that the possibility of a Grexit was small.