ATHENS, February 5 (RAPSI) - Former head of Hellenic Postbank Angelos Filippidis, whom a Turkish court decided not to extradite to Greece, returned to Athens this Wednesday of his own accord and was arrested in the airport, Athens News Agency reports.

Greek officials are looking into the unsecured loans of hundreds of millions of euros issued by the bank between 2007 and 2013. The loans have not been serviced since the financial crisis hit the country.

In telephone interviews from abroad, Filippidis repeatedly told the Greek media that the loans were legitimate and that he was ready to go to prison if the contrary were proved. On January 11, he was arrested in Turkey under an international arrest warrant issued by the Greek prosecutor’s office. However, the Turkish court ruled against extraditing the former bank manager.

Hellenic Postbank was formerly a state-run bank, but as a result of the crisis, it was divided up and privatized. The current inquiry concerns loans that the bank issued totaling up to 500 million euros, while the country’s financial stability fund provided some 5.5 mln euros to prop up the bank. The bank incurred losses of 347 million euros, according to the prosecutor’s office. The money was transferred to offshore areas and then wired to business people. Prominent bankers involved in politics and business owners are among the suspects. Filippidis, head of the bank between October 2007 and December 2009, claimed that only 5% of the loans in Postbank’s lending portfolio are worrisome, while other Greek banks have up to 25%.