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The Secretary General of the Greek Ministry of Finance Dimitris Georgakopoulos resigned. The official statement made by the government spokesman George Petalotis for Reuters said that the resignation was made for personal reasons. It was accepted by Minister George Papakonstantinou.

The official statement made by Georgakopoulos for the media, however, is different. The already former secretary general blames the ministry body for not giving him fields of responsibility more than 13 months. He was giving repeatedly alternative proposals for both the tax policy of Greece and the reform of the tax offices, but systematically they were not taken into account by the administrations of the Ministry and personally by George Papaconstantinou. Dimitris Georgakopoulos strongly opposed the additional taxation of large corporations.  

His resignation comes just two days after Moody's has lowered the credit rating of Greece by three points and actually put it on a par with countries like Bolivia and Belarus. One of the Moody's arguments was exactly the inefficient tax policy of the Greek government. According to the first data "in progress" the failure only for January and February 2011 amounts to around 500 million euros.

Greek media are talking about serious disagreements in the government's economic team just two days before the extraordinary summit in Brussels on Friday which is meant to be the stage for the crucial meeting on March 25 when EU leaders must decide on the future economic governance of Europe.