Foreign Correspondent: April 13

UPDATE: ABC advises this will now air April 20.

This week on ABC’s Foreign Correspondent Mark Corcoran looks at Greece’s staggering debt of $450b and whether it threatens to impact on the country’s neighbours.

“There’s an old saying here in Greece: the more money you steal the better off you are. If you steal a few hundred Euros you go to jail. If you steal thousands of Euros, we’ll talk about it. If you steal a few million Euros, you become a hero” -Christos Kyriakousis Athens cabbie.

Foreign Correspondent’s Mark Corcoran takes a white-knuckle cab ride into Greece’s financial maelstrom to meet some everyday locals coping with a looming catastrophe. Hard-bitten cabbie Christos Kyriakousis is his street-wise guide, former Perth businessman and local hotelier Nick Geronimos wrestles with a groaning and glacial bureaucracy, while fashionista and A-list facilitator Renee Pappas decries the burgeoning ranks of illegal immigrants slipping into the country and flogging knock-off Prada in Athens’ historical precincts.

All shake their heads and shrug their shoulders about Fakalaki – the rampant and pervasive system of kickbacks and payola that blight the economy and burden everyone.

“It is broken – it has to be fixed” -Nick Geronimos Athens businessman.

That’s the dilemma undermining action. Corruption has become an accepted norm, a black economy has grown so big that tax receipts are dangerously anaemic and everyone agrees something needs to be done, but by someone else.

It airs 8pm Tuesdays on ABC1.