Greek businessman and political figure Thanos Tzimeros has published a comprehensive defense of the late former minister Stefanos Manos, countering decades of political allegations surrounding corporate bankruptcies, football club debt write-offs, and fuel tax increases.
Writing in an article published on Tuesday, 1 September 2026, Tzimeros stated that attacks against Manos were manufactured by political party communication strategists using false claims and stripped-of-context facts to discredit a reformer who threatened Greece's political system.
Tzimeros, former president of the Recreate Greece party, wrote that political smears aim to present competent and ethical public figures as inconsistent and corrupt. He noted that the accusations against Manos resurfaced in social media comments following an earlier piece he authored 15 days prior.
Rebutting the Allatini Bankruptcy Claim
Addressing the allegation that Manos bankrupted the Allatini flour company, Tzimeros described the claim as completely false. He noted that Manos managed Allatini from 1966 until 1977, modernizing operations and increasing profitability through innovative commercial practices.
During his tenure, Manos bypassed wholesale distributors to sell directly to retail points, eliminated un-packaged bulk sales to enforce quality control, and introduced self-raising flour to the Greek market.
When Manos entered politics in 1977, he resigned from all corporate roles at Allatini to eliminate any potential conflict of interest. The company continued normal operations and was later sold to other business groups.
Tzimeros explained that Allatini faced financial distress alongside the broader Greek flour milling industry in the late 1980s under the PASOK administration. The government imposed retail price caps on flour while international wheat and energy costs rose sharply, stifling the sector.
Price controls in Greece had been used since World War I and were famously utilized by German occupation authorities during World War II, leading to widespread black-market trading. Post-war governments retained price limits until Manos permanently abolished them in 1992 as minister, though profit margin caps were recently revived under the current government.
Tzimeros stated that the smear regarding Allatini was created by the Avrianist political media network and propagated across political factions opposed to Manos's insistence on managing public administration with corporate efficiency rather than party patronage.
Clarifying the Olympiacos Debt Settlement
Tzimeros also addressed claims that Manos wrote off the debts of the Olympiacos football club while serving as Minister of National Economy and Finance in the government of Konstantinos Mitsotakis. He emphasized that the debt settlement was enacted by Law 2021/1992, which was passed by parliament with support from opposition party PASOK, rather than by ministerial decree.
The legislation applied to all Greek sports corporate entities owing money to the state, waiving accumulated penalties and late fees while structuring core debt payments across 60 to 120 monthly installments. Similar debt relief laws were repeatedly utilized by major Greek sports clubs throughout history.
In 1992, Olympiacos faced impending bankruptcy, asset seizure, and demotion to the Third Division following the Koskotas scandal, which Tzimeros described as a product of PASOK era institutional failures.
Manos argued at the time that state liquidation of the club would yield zero recovery for the treasury and the Bank of Crete, as initial tax debts had tripled due to late interest. Waiving surcharges secured principal debt payments over time and allowed investor Sokratis Kokkalis to acquire the club without taking on 11 billion drachmas in growing liabilities.
While acknowledging that debt write-offs created a moral hazard for sports organizations and political parties, Tzimeros stated that debtor political parties should face liquidation and legal prosecution, adding that bank concessions to political parties constitute a breach of fiduciary duty to shareholders.
Fuel Taxes and Economic Reforms
Regarding claims that Manos imposed a 50-drachma tax on petrol overnight, Tzimeros clarified that the Special Consumption Tax increase in 1992 was between 32 and 35 drachmas per liter, depending on the fuel type.
Contextualizing the measure, Tzimeros outlined the economic crisis inherited by the Mitsotakis government in April 1990. Public debt had risen from 30 percent of gross domestic product under PASOK in 1981 to 80 percent in 1990, budget deficits reached 16 percent of GDP, annual inflation hit 20 percent, and the European Economic Community threatened to suspend development funds.
As Finance Minister, Manos enacted major structural reforms. He lowered personal and corporate tax rates, eliminated double taxation on dividends, reduced government expenditures, privatized failed state enterprises, introduced public-private partnerships and leasing, brought mobile telephony to Greece, and initiated the privatization of state telecommunications provider OTE despite intense political opposition.
Following the signing of the Maastricht Treaty in 1992, Greece urgently required a primary budget surplus to meet European monetary union criteria. The fuel tax increase was recommended and required by the EEC to generate immediate revenue with zero collection cost, as taxes were collected directly at refineries.
The tax generated Greece's first primary surplus since 1973, lowered borrowing costs, and preserved EEC funding through Delors financial packages, despite raising unleaded petrol prices from 130 to 162.2 drachmas per liter.
Tzimeros highlighted Manos's overhaul of income taxation, which replaced nine tax brackets reaching 50 percent with four streamlined brackets and a 1,000,000-drachma tax-free allowance for low earners. Manos also launched the national campaign titled Do You Love Greece? Proof! to combat tax evasion through purchase receipts, laying the groundwork for modern digital auditing systems.
Under previous Law 1828/1989, an annual salary of 2.5 million drachmas incurred 701,000 drachmas in income tax. Under Manos's Law 2065/1992, tax on the same income dropped to 75,000 drachmas as the tax rate for that income tier fell from 38 percent to 5 percent, far offsetting the annual fuel tax impact of approximately 39,648 drachmas. Tzimeros noted that subsequent Greek governments raised the fuel excise tax 12 times since 1992.
Urban Planning and Infrastructure Legacy
Tzimeros detailed Manos's achievements as a pragmatic liberal reformer in urban planning and environmental policy. In 1991, Manos introduced a vehicle scrapping program exempting buyers of catalytic vehicles from taxes, leading to the removal of nearly 350,000 old polluting vehicles within 18 months and eliminating smog in Athens.
During his first term heading the newly formed Ministry of Physical Planning, Housing and Environment, Manos redeveloped the Plaka district of Athens from a troubled area into a premier cultural site, ignoring death threats from local venue owners.
Manos also legislated mandatory ground-floor parking spaces in new apartment buildings against resistance from construction developers, and created pedestrian zones across central Athens despite protests from commercial associations, PASOK, and KKE.
In 1979, under the Karamanlis administration, Manos established the transfer of building coefficients to preserve historic neoclassical buildings without state funds. Property owners were compensated by selling building rights to private developers, subject to a nationwide maximum building coefficient cap of 2.4.
Council of State rulings in 1994 and 2002 blocked the transfer mechanism by demanding exhaustive block studies, leading to the collapse of hundreds of historic buildings. Tzimeros noted that the mechanism was finally implemented 47 years later in March 2026 through the Digital Land Bank and Receiving Zones.
Tzimeros stated that major Greek infrastructure projects, including the Attiki Odos motorways, the Rio-Antirrio Bridge, the Athens Metro, and Spata Airport, were initiated or made possible through Manos's policy framework. Manos also established land-use controls, protections for traditional settlements, private telecommunications, and energy market deregulation.
Electoral History and Political Impact
An engineer trained in aerodynamics, Manos lost his parliamentary seat in the 1981 elections after refusing to grant political favors through his ministry, frustrating local party officials.
In the May 2012 elections, Manos's party Drasi received 1.8 percent of the vote, while Tzimeros's party Recreate Greece received 2.2 percent. When the two parties formed an electoral coalition for the June 2012 elections, they secured 1.6 percent of the vote, prompting Manos to retire from politics immediately afterward.
Tzimeros recalled a campaign encounter in the Gazi neighborhood of Athens during June 2012, where a citizen expressed pride in abstaining from voting. Tzimeros argued that Greek voters rejected Manos's direct style and reform efforts because accountability required personal commitment rather than political clientelism.
In his closing personal note, Tzimeros mentioned that Manos raised five children with his wife, and none of them pursued careers in Greek politics.
