Flamboyant ex-finance minister Yanis Varoufakis on Friday continued his high-profile sniping against former comrades - especially Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras - by revealing vivid background from the summer of 2015, when Greece's ruling leftists flirted with Grexit and an unstructured default.
"In the summer of 2015 Alexis Tsipras told me that I should fear another Goudi," Varoufakis was quoted by a local magazine, "Vice".
"Goudi" refers to an old army camp in east Athens where five political and a cashiered military commander were executed in November 1922 for their role in the Asia Minor Catastrophe, i.e. Greece's failed military expedition in western Turkey over 1919-22. The six were charged and convicted of high treason.
According to Varoufakis, he considered the statement as a "type of threat" and pressure to accept a compromise with creditors at the time.
"I never believed it. I am waiting for a special court to convene; I will go with my evidence," he underlined.
Asked about the controversial referendum that was declared in late June 2015 and ultimately held on July 5, Varoufakis claimed that he advised Tsipras to back off such a prospect if he had actually decided to bow to creditors' demands.
"Don't get our people on the streets; don't set them off for a clash over a referendum where the goal is for us to lose (in the referendum result) ... But he (Tsipras) told me that he couldn't tell people that we had conceded," the controversial and outspoken Varoufakis said.
The former minister Tweeted the interview, printed in Greek, over his account, hours before an event is held at a small Athens indoor arena for his pan-European DiEM25 initiative.
