EFKA candidate pulls out amid conflict of interest accusations

The government's candidate chair for Greece's umbrella social security fund EFKA, Efstathios Marinos, withdrew from the nomination on Thursday, following an outcry over an apparent conflict of interest.

At a parliamentary committee meeting to examine the nomination on Wednesday, New Democracy MP and former labor minister Yiannis Vroutsis revealed that while Marinos was a technical consultant to the e-Government Center for Social Security (IDIKA), he granted projects through direct concessions to his partner, Georgios Karkalis, with whom he had a firm named Safecape Ltd.

Marinos has been working for IDIKA since 2015, and there is a contract for his employment worth 20,000 euros and dated March 26, 2018. He claimed he had transferred his stake in Safecape "yesterday," but it has also emerged he is close to a relative of the prime minister's partner, Betty Baziana....