Panos Kammenos

Panagiotis "Panos" Kammenos (Παναγιώτης "Πάνος" Καμμένος, ; born 12 May 1965) is a Greek politician and the founder of the right-wing party "Independent Greeks", which formed the governing coalition of the Hellenic Parliament with the Syriza Party after Kammenos met with Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, on 26 January 2015.

In 1993, he was first elected Member of Parliament in the New Democracy in the Second District of Athens.

In 2007, he was appointed Deputy Minister of Mercantile Marine, Aegean and Island Policy in the government of Kostas Karamanlis, Minister and politician where the head was Georgios Voulgarakis.

He was sometimes involved as an expert mediator and an official observer in elections in foreign countries.

Kammenos accused the former Prime Minister of Greece George Papandreou of treason.

RISI had been part of Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), Russia′s primary overseas espionage agency, until it was brought under the office of the Russian president in 2009.

He said that the Hellenic Postbank, a public banking arm of the Greek government, oddly purchased a $1.3 billion worth of credit default swap (CDS) to insure against a default of the Greek government in spring and summer of 2009 (so indirectly, the government bought protection against its own default), and those CDS was then subsequently sold in December 2009 to a private firm named IJ Partners for $40 million.

Naturally, as the Greek debt crisis was getting progressively worse, the CDS in question was probably worth $27 billion in June 2011.

On 24 February 2012, through his personal social networking sites, Kammenos announced the establishment of the new party called "Independent Greeks (ANEL)" and published the Declaration.

Yiannis Manolis directly expressed its intention to join the new party format.

He expressed support for Elena Kountoura, Panagiotis Melas and other MPs.

He advocated for eliminating a large part of Greece's debt, which was equivalent to 175 per cent of the country's gross domestic product.

Kammenos and the Independent Greeks took a hardline stance against illegal immigration into Greece.

The Independent Greeks and Kammenos are Eurosceptics.

He walked the halls of the Greek Parliament wearing a T-shirt that said, "Greece is not for sale."

With 3.7% of votes won in the snap elections, Independent Greeks, the junior coalition partner in Tsipras's last government, entered the parliament.

Panos Kammenos formed a government with Tsipras and Syriza.

In 2013, a Greek court decided that he should pay 30,000 euros for libel against the brother of George Papandreou and in 2014, a court decided that Kammenos accusations were false and slanderous and he should pay 100,000 euros to the IJ PARTNERS.

Kammenos has stated that "Europe is governed by German neo-Nazis".

He has also called German Minister of Finance Wolfgang Schäuble persona non grata because of war reparations that Kammenos demands from Germany.

In 2013, he was investigated by a court for urging supporters to lynch a local mayor who was supporting gold mining in Skouries.

Kammenos said to his supporters "(the mayor) must not be able to walk around. Lynch him."

In November 2014, the Institute signed a "memorandum of understanding" with the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies (RISI).

In December 2014, Kammenos stated on television that Greek Buddhist, Jewish and Muslim religious institutions do not pay taxes (in contrast to the Church of Greece, which was exempted from income taxes beginning in 2004 and whose clergy benefit from state salaries, but also began paying property taxes on its non-monastic, non-worship space properties in 2011 ) as part of a comment on actions or perceived policies of the Antonis Samaras government with which he disagreed:

...Here we are looking at the Orthodoxy, which Mr. Samaras invokes in his article, the government should make up its mind about the other issues that were against the Church of Greece.

Cremation, agreement with same-sex union, these are the positions that the present government took, the government of Samaras, which arrives and calls out most definitely that there should be taxation only on the Orthodox religion, here the Buddhists, the Hebrews, the Muslims don't pay, the Orthodox Church pays; indeed the monastic establishment is in danger, too...

The remark was condemned by Greece's Jewish community and government officials, who called it "conspiracy theories, lies and slander”.

Kammenos has very close links with the inner circle of Russian president Vladimir Putin.

He was named Greece's Minister of National Defence on 27 January 2015.

He served until 20 August 2015, when the Syriza-ANEL coalition resigned, and continued as a lame duck until 28 August, when he was succeeded by the interim Minister, Ioannis Giangos.

He again became Minister of National Defence on 23 September 2015 when the Syriza-ANEL coalition was re-created following the election of 20 September 2015.

Kammenos was born in Athens, Greece.

He studied economics and psychology at the University of Lyon Business Administration School of Managers.

As a minister of Defence, in 2015, he refounded after years the Mixed Groups of Reconstruction Machines (MOMA).

Kammenos co-founded with his friend, University of Thrace professor Filippos Tsalidis, Athens-based Institute of Geopolitical Studies.

In March 2015 Kammenos said that "If they deal a blow to Greece, then they should know Greece will suspend the Dublin II treaty, and migrants will get their ID and documents and will travel to Berlin".

He also stated that "If Europe leaves us in the crisis, we will flood it with migrants, and it will be even worse for Berlin if in that wave of millions of economic migrants there will be some jihadists of the Islamic State too” and threatened that Greece would "give to migrants from everywhere the documents they need to travel in the Schengen area."

Since January 2017, RISI has been headed by the ex-chief of the SVR, Mikhail Fradkov.

In December 2019, speaking to a conference held by the Institute, Panos Kammenos effectively admitted that he had blackmailed the primate of the Church of Greece, Archbishop Ieronymos II, on behalf of Russia by transmitting Russia′s threat to withdraw Russia′s alleged guarantees to Greece to preclude occupation by Turkey of Greek islands such as Kastellorizo, Lemnos and others in the Eastern Aegean in the event that the Church of Greece recognised the Church of Ukraine.

He has been honored with the Grand Cross of Merit from the Primate of the Czech and Slovak Orthodox Church, the Medal of Honor Patriarchate of Jerusalem and the Order of Knight of the National Order of Merit by the President of France Nicolas Sarkozy.