The corruption charges that have been scorching Greek politics engulfed Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou last week in the worst crisis of his tenure. Papandreou found himself compelled to rebut allegations by the central figure in the multimillion-dollar banking scandal that the Prime Minister personally received some of those millions as secret payments for political favor. The accusations, which ran in TIME and as a cover story in several of the magazine's foreign editions, inspired passionate outcry in Greece and provoked opposition leaders in Parliament to demand the Prime Minister's resignation.
The charges came from George Koskotas, 34, imprisoned owner of the...