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Greece’s Varoufakis to stand trial after admitting drug use 36 years ago

Greece’s Varoufakis to stand trial after admitting drug use 36 years ago


ATHENS— Greece’s former Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis has been indicted and will stand trial for allegedly promoting the use of drugs, his left-wing MeRA25 party said in a statement Wednesday.

The former politician, who served in the left-wing Syriza government during the country’s financial crisis in 2015 and remains a darling of the European left, is due to appear in court on Dec. 16. The charges concern comments he made during a podcast, in which he admitted he had tried drugs some 36 years ago at a festival in Australia.

“Determined not to do a Bill Clinton (remember the laughable ‘I didn’t inhale’?), I said I had,” Varoufakis said while acknowledging past use of marijuana and describing a single experience with ecstasy at a festival in Sydney in 1989. The former minister said that while the experience had initially been pleasant, it resulted in a week-long migraine that deterred him from using drugs again.



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