Stelios Stavridis, the chairman of the Hellenic Republic Asset Development Fund (government privatization agency), has been forced to resign after he hitched a ride to a vacation spot on the private jet of a Greek oil magnate involved in the privatization of the state gambling company, OPAP, for €652 million.

Government officials insisted that Mr. Stavridis's resignment from the privatization agency was "for ethical reasons" and would not upset the country's state sell-off effort.

The Greek finance minister, Yannis Stournaras, sought Mr. Stavridis's resignation from HRADF after a newspaper quoted the chairman as saying he had traveled last week on the Lear jet of the oil and shipping oligarch Dimitris Melissanidis, a major stakeholder in the Greek-Czech consortium Emma Delta, which agreed to buy the OPAP stake in May.

Mr. Stavridis stated in a press release:

"I sincerely thank the wonderful team of Hellenic Republic Asset Development Fund for the excellent and fruitful cooperation we had and I wholeheartedly wish the Government, with which we also had an excellent cooperation, a lot of success in the very difficult but beneficial and nationally necessary privatization program."