Greece's developments: Yanis Varoufakis revealed to have worked upon a plan 'B'

Greece and her lenders are still working out the format of upcoming talks, the country’s labor minister said, confirming a delay in the negotiations for a third international bailout.

Meanwhile, European leaders were shocked after the release of a recording where Greece's former finance minister Yanis Varoufakis said he had been working upon a "Plan 'B'" since December 2014.

* Bailout negotiators from the troika of the European Commission, European Central Bank (ECB) and International Monetary Fund (IMF) had been due to arrive in Athens last Friday to start talks for the new rescue package worth an expected €85 billion. But then, an un-named government official said talks at a “technical level” were now set to start on Tuesday.

The new agreement must be concluded before August 20 when Greece faces a debt repayment to the ECB worth more than three billion euro.

* There is also a speculation that the Greek stock market might reopen on Tuesday, more than four weeks after capital controls were imposed.

* The government of Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has already begun implementing new austerity measures demanded in return for the new bailout – but had relied on support from opposition parties after nearly a quarter of lawmakers in the ruling Syriza party opposed him.

* Meanwhile, over the weekend, Greece's local newspaper Kathimerini revealed that former finance minister Yanis Varoufakis spent months on a plan to develop a parallel banking system while in office.

In a teleconference call with members of international hedge funds that was allegedly coordinated by former British Chancellor of the Exchequer Norman Lamont, Varoufakis claimed to have been given the green light by Tsipras last December – a month before general elections that brought Syriza party to power – to plan a payment system that could operate in euros but which could be changed into drachmas “overnight” if necessary.

* Here is a transcript conducted by the Financial Times:

"The prime minister, before he became prime minister, had given me the green light to come up with a Plan B. I assembled a very able team, a small small team under wraps for obvious reasons. The difficulty was going from the five people who planned it to the 1000 that would be implementing it. For that i had to receive another authorization that never came.

There is the website of the tax office where citizens go and use their tax file number and transfer monies to their tax. We were planning to create surreptitiously reserve accounts attached to every tax file number without telling anyone. At the touch of the button to allow us to give Pin numbers to tax payers so when the state owed, say, €1m to a pharmaceutical company, we could create a digital transfer, and a Pin.

That would have created a parallel system so while the banks were shut thanks to the ECB’s aggressive action, it would give us some breathing space."

* As The Guardian says, Varoufakis also spoke about a fight between the European Stability Mechanism, European Commission, IMF and German finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble. There is a total lack of coordination between the creditors, former minister tells Norman Lamont:

"Wolfgang has quite clearly said to me that he wants Grexit. He clearly believes that this extend and pretend is unacceptable. This is the one point where we see eye to eye - I agree with him, but for completely different reasons.

The IMF does not want an agreement because it does not want to violate its charter again to provide new loans to a country whose debt is unviable.

The Commission really wants the deal to go ahead, Merkel wants this deal to go ahead."

* Greece’s opposition parties were quick to criticize Varoufakis over his work on a parallel payment system.

The centre-right opposition New Democracy party demanded that the government “come up with convincing answers for the Greek people . . . to shed light on this dark narrative”, the Financial Times has reported.