Greek financial audits 2009–2010
Audits of Greece's public finances during the period 2009–2010 were undertaken by the EU authorities. Since joining the Euro zone, Greece's public finances markedly deviated from the debt and deficit limits set by Stability and Growth Pact.
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Against this backdrop, a 2004 external audit exposed creative accounting practices understating the problem, putting the EU authorities on alert thereafter. In 2009, the Greek government-debt crisis developed, and the EU authorities suspected again a lack of credibility in its book keeping, hence the audits.
This caused political and financial market turmoil. For instance, it reignited a controversy about Greece's off-market swaps contracted with Goldman Sachs in 2001. The accounts for the period 2006–2009, including debt and deficits levels, were regularized. The lasting effects were institutional changes in Greece and at the EU level in the area of fiscal data. There remains, nonetheless, an ongoing controversy about methodological issues that affected the extent of revisions.