Chancellor Jaakko Jonkka said on Thursday that Finance Ministry officials failed to carry out their responsibility to make public documents regarding the collateral agreement -- even after the Supreme Administrative Court ordered them to so in May.
Finland demanded collateral from Greece when the euro countries negotiated the struggling state's loan package. Greece called for the contract to be kept secret. The release of information was demanded by a number of media outlets, including Yle. The high court ruled that taxpayers had a right to see most of the details.
Political hay?
In June, opposition Finns Party chair Timo Soini took out a full-page newspaper ad charging that the guarantees by Greece did not exist.
Finance Minister Jutta Urpilainen rejected Soini's claims and countered that he was giving a misleading picture of the agreement.
The Finance Ministry said the guarantees were indeed in place and that Soini's criticism referred to only one part of the guarantee arrangement package. The ministry published documents showing the loan guarantees carried by four Greek banks. Thus the guarantee agreement was technically made between Finland and the banks, not between the states of Finland and Greece.
However the documents were not all released immediately, leading to Jonkka's probe.