George at Golden Dawn New York has issued a statement (by podcast) on the Baltakos Affair, which I will come to in a moment.  First, the background.

Baltakos was a close aide of Antonis Samaras, who appointed him to the post of government general secretary in June 2012.  He is identified with the right-wing of New Democracy, and is said to have led opposition within the party to the crackdown on Golden Dawn, at least up to the December 2013 murder of the “anti-racist rapper” Pavlos Fyssas (which the Greek government used as a pretext to attack GD).

Six months ago Baltakos initiated a series of conversations with Golden Dawn - he says now, to gain their trust and extract information from them.  But the information flow appears to have been in the opposite direction.  A video has been posted by the impressive Ilias Kasidiaris, the GD member of parliament and Athens mayoral candidate,  showing Baltakos explaining to him, Kasidiaris, how, why and by whom the decision to crackdown on GD was taken.  It is a seismic political confession.  Baltakos has been forced to resign.  He now says he expects other “damaging” releases from GD to follow.

A translation by EnetEnglish of the Baltakos confession follows:

Kasidiaris: To begin with when I came out [of remand], can you tell me how Samaras took it?

Baltakos: He was in America then.

Kasidiaris: Yes, he was in America, but I heard he nearly had a stroke.

Baltakos: It was mad! It was crazy, fucking hell ... he didn’t call me, I told him what you were doing ... I had told him. He wouldn’t [therefore] tell me about these things. He got the other two and he fucked them out it: [Justice Minister Haralambos] Athanassiou and [Interior Minister Nikos] Dendias. “You made a fool out of me, you tricked me, you humiliated me.” Because the day before, Samaras had made astatement at the American Zionist conference [American Jewish Congress] that “They are finished, I busted them, busted them, it’s all over!” And the next day you’re released from jail.

Kasidiaris: What happened with the investigating magistrates who let us out at the crucial moment? After they let us out, they got the others and did a U-turn.

Baltakos: They let you out for the simple reason that there is no evidence.

Kasidiaris: Yes, good, there was nothing.

Baltakos: And no none picked up the phone to pressurise them because everyone thought it was so obvious ... everyone took it for granted: “But what can the investigating magistrate do?” The investigating magistrate had no evidence! Nothing!

Kasidiaris: And he had none for the others either …

Baltakos: But there was for the others … [he makes the gesture of holding a phone with his hand]

Kasidiaris: Who’s to blame for that?

Baltakos: Both of them.

Kasidiaris: Dendias, Athanassiou?

Baltakos: Who else?

Kasidiaris: And did Samaras have to say? Was he aware of what what was going on?

Baltakos: No, he didn’t at the start ... but when he saw the opinion polls ... he thought, the bourgeois that he is, that all this terrible. “They’ll [Golden Dawn] will go down to 2%, he says” ... And I said: “I’m telling you, they will go up to 20%.” He says: “You’re an asshole.”

Kasidiaris: Who told him to do all this?

Baltakos: First of all, he’s afraid for himself. Because you are cutting his lead over Syriza.

Kasidiaris: We take votes, is that it?

Baltakos: That makes sense.

Kasidiaris: And because we take his votes he puts us jail?

Baltakos: Motherfucker ... an incredible thing, unbelievable.

Kasidiaris: And what about what [former justice minister] Roupakiotis said?

Baltakos: That’s for sure, since he did it the week he was going there.

Kasidiaris: [Supreme Court chief prosecutor Efterpi] Goutzamani, the things she did, I have information that she is totally on the right.

Baltakos: [Makes the sign of the cross]

Kasidiaris: She’s so devout.

Baltakos: Yes.

Kasidiaris: How did she do these disgraceful things with [Supreme Court deputy prosecutor Haralambos] Vourliotis and come up with these findings?

Baltakos: They convinced her that “they are pagans, idolaters, Nazis and opposed to Christianity”.

Kasidiaris: Who persuaded her of all that?

Baltakos: Athanassiou and Dendias.

Kasidiaris: You should go to the prosecutor and tell him who set up this whole conspiracy: that Athanassiou gave orders to Goutzamani, that Samaras had given orders to Athanassiou, and all of them should go on trial. If you are a just man, this is what you should do.

Baltakos: If I’m do this now, she will order a preliminary investigation lasting a half an hour and they will shelve it.

Kasidiaris: You think so?

Baltakos: Well, of course! Am I going to do that with Samaras in government? To which prosecutor would I go? Goutzamani is a prosecutor. I’m going to denounce Goutzamani to herself?

Kasidiaris: How did Goutzamani become Supreme Court prosecutor?

Baltakos: Because she’s from the same village.

Kasidiaris: So now she’s repaying the debt.

Baltakos: Yes, she’s from the same village. OK, not from the same village, but from a nearby village. They’ve been in the same competition, they are almost the same age. They are compatriots, there’s nothing more to it.”

Now we all know that everything GD has been saying about the Samaras government’s relations with international Jewry and the EU austerity machine, and about the persecution of GD itself, has been accurate.  To quote George from his website:

Perjury, nepotism, corruption, cronyism, international financial interests and the system’s need to preserve the Memorandum/Austerity have all factored into this crackdown on Golden Dawn.

Here is George’s statement: