'My dad was tortured for four years...being told my career was over was a gift'

22 February 2024 , 21:05

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Yanis Varoufakis, former Greek finance minister (Image: Ian Vogler / Daily Mirror)

In the summer of 2015, Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis came under extraordinary pressure from Brussels to agree to a ‘bailout’ that he believed would leave his country eternally in a ‘debtors’ prison’.

“It was a case of sign… or else,” Varoufakis remembers. “I laughed inside. My father was tortured for four years for refusing to sign a piece of paper. So, in Brussels the threat that my political career could be ended sounded like a gift.”

More serious were death threats against his wife’s son made in 2011, when he was helping journalists investigate a banking scandal. I received an anonymous phone call late at night. The caller described the route my wife’s son had taken home and said: ‘If you want him to come home safely in future, stop investigating.’ They named a particular bank.”

Varoufakis appeared nightly on British television news during 2015, the recognisable face of the anti-Austerity Syriza party, often emerging from neoclassical state buildings in motorbike leathers.

Greece stood bravely for seven long months against brutal bailout conditions imposed by the EU – a David and Goliath battle made more compelling by the fear Greek bankruptcy would spread to our shores. Varoufakis’ other stake in British folklore of the musical kind is that his artist wife Danae Stratou is claimed to be the student who “came from Greece, she had the thirst for knowledge” in Pulp song Common People.

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'My dad was tortured for four years...being told my career was over was a gift'

Yanis Varoufakis and his wife Greek artist Danae Stratou (AFP/Getty Images)

Certainly, she was the only Greek sculpture student at Saint Martins’ College at the same time as Jarvis Cocker – 1988. In a new documentary series, In the Eye of the Storm, Varoufakis is the still presence at the epicentre of the unfolding Greek tragedy. His calmness makes sense when he talks about his father, George, held as a political prisoner during the Greek Civil War.

“My father was asked to sign a piece of paper after being picked up by the secret police as a student activist in 1945,” Varoufakis says at our meeting in London. “Written on the piece of paper was a denunciation of communism. He was not a communist, but he refused to sign. He said, ‘I’m not a Muslim, but I wouldn’t denounce Islam’.”

George, a young chemical engineer at Athens University, was exiled to the Aegean island concentration camp of Makronisos – a “massive open air torture chamber” where many prisoners were murdered. For refusing to sign the piece of paper, Varoufakis says, “my father was, many times, tied into a sack with animals in it and thrown into the sea. Sometimes cats would bite and scratch his face, sometimes snakes.” Eventually George was exiled to the Aegean island of Ikaria, before finally returning to university and becoming chairman of Greece’s first steel mill. His love of metallurgy led to a PhD and books on how metals shaped Greek history.

Back at Athens University, he also met Eleni Tsaggaraki, Varoufakis’ mum – a chemist and part of the Greek feminist movement. Her own dangerous work included travelling to rural outposts to help women escape abusive husbands. When she met George, she was originally encouraged to spy on him by a fascist organisation. Their plan failed when, after a few weeks, the couple fell in love. Years later, when their teen son Yanis became heavily involved in student politics, they feared history repeating itself, and sent him to Britain to study at the University of Essex.

Varoufakis’ origins are explored in the documentary series by Raoul Martinez, an award-winning writer and artist, who is also the brother of comic, writer and activist Francesca Martinez, a producer on the film. Raoul Martinez and Varoufakis were introduced by the legendary composer, musician and producer Brian Eno, a co-founder of Varoufakis’ latest political venture DiEM25, the pan-European ‘Democracy in Europe Movement’. “I agreed because it’s Brian Eno,” Varoufakis laughs.

Varoufakis’ origins are explored in the documentary series by Raoul Martinez (Getty Images)

The six-part film, which will stream on Amazon and Apple, took five years, to make, interrupted by the pandemic. “The first time I heard Yanis speak, the whole room was hanging on his every word,” Martinez tells the film’s star-packed premiere in Leicester Square.

“He was making everyone laugh about market failure. He’s talking about capitalism and making it entertaining. It’s rare you get this blend of qualities in one person.” Varoufakis says it took him 30 years of studying complex economic models to realise most were no more than “a beautiful piece of architecture. The models are based on the assumption that there is no time, no space, no money and no debt,” he says. “It is beautiful bulls***. It doesn’t smell, but it is bulls***.“That’s why there are fewer women in economic departments. Women are not as prepared to take bulls*** as men.”

Now he says his ambition is to make people see politics as “an exciting detective novel – finding out why they are doing what they are doing to us. It’s like watching a thriller – the power to see things as they really are.” There are thrilling twists and turns to the Varoufakis story too, not least the moment when he won the Greek referendum – Greeks voted ‘Oxi’ or ‘No’ to the EU deal – and lost his political gamble the same night.

Yanis Varoufakis with his wife after he quit (AFP/Getty Images)

Joining Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras to celebrate the referendum result, he realised his political ally was about to give in to Brussels’ demands despite the result. “I was tired, sleepless and angry,” he remembers. “I wrote my resignation letter, before falling asleep on the couch. The sun had just risen over Athens.” As he lay there his 11-year-old daughter got up for a glass of water. “She said, ‘why are you up?’” Varoufakis recalls. “I said, ‘I just resigned’. She said, ‘Thank God. What took you so long?’ I laughed my head off.”

After resigning, he watched the “firesale” of his country’s assets – from stunning beaches to archaeological sites – and his colleagues “sacrificing me”. With no ministry, it was now just him and his laptop against the Greek state, the EU, the communists, the fascists. “And the people in the street who continued to support me.” Varoufakis was hospitalised after being attacked in 2021 by assailants who falsely believed he had surrendered to the bailout. He says his wife’s career has suffered from his establishment opponents on the other side.

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“My wife made a very good living out of art until she was with me,” he says. “She’s not sold a single piece in a Greek gallery or had a single Arts Council grant just for being my wife. The banks are very involved in the art world.”

Varoufakis says he could never endure what his father endured. But George’s unbreakable spirit lives on.

Since leaving government Varoufakis has set up new political parties and alliances from DiEM25 to Progressive International. “DiEM25 is about not going gently into the good night” to paraphrase Dylan Thomas,” he says. “What should we do? Be bystanders watching the degeneration of our societies, our polities, our communities…? Or, fight for that which – whether you win or not – can sow the seeds of our next renaissance?”