ECB's Draghi: Troika officials must return to Athens before it is too late for Greece

The President of the European Central Bank Mario Draghi pressed Greek authorities to accept the return of the troika officials back to Athens in order to examine the government's books.

On Monday Draghi told Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis at a meeting in Brussels the government’s books needed to be examined to determine its financing shortfall, the people with the knowledge of the matter told Bloomberg.

Greece agreed to allow experts representing the commission, ECB and IMF to start work in Athens on Wednesday, the Netherlands’s Jeroen Dijsselbloem said, while Varoufakis commented that the idea that Greece was opposed to such a move was a misunderstanding, according to one of the officials with direct knowledge of the exchange.

The Greek treasury could face a cash crunch in a couple of weeks, as financial markets are closed, and the central bank is keeping its banks on a tight leash, another European official said on Monday. Without getting access to the goervment books, it’s impossible to know the situation for sure.

Greece's Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras is trying to access European bailout funds for his country without precisely following the anti-austerity agenda that won him election seven weeks ago. He has so far dropped demands for a writedown on Greek debt, abandoned his plan to halt privatizations and accepted that he won’t get “bridge financing” without signing up to conditions. 

Dijsselbloem said that Greece won’t get any more cash from its 240 billion-euro ($260 billion) rescue program until its official creditors are satisfied that Tsipras is committed to all the economic fixes needed to meet its conditions.

There is no possibility for Greece’s creditors to adequately audit the government’s accounts without sending officials to Athens, a troika official said. The government would need to fly hundreds of Greek officials to Brussels for the work to be done there, he added.