Jim Grivokostopoulos (Grivas) abruptly resigned from his position as Treasurer of the Victorian Council for Greek National Day during a general meeting on Monday, December 11.
The Victorian Council for Greek National Day is made up of representatives from all of Victoria’s major Greek organisations and was established to organise commemoration events for Greece’s Independence Day on March 25 each year. The Current Chairman is Cretan Australian, Tony Tsourdalakis.
According to The Greek Herald‘s sources, Mr Grivas produced a Profit & Loss (P&L) statement for the Council’s committee at an Annual General Meeting (AGM) earlier this year.
At Monday’s general meeting, Mr Grivas issued an apology to committee members for producing this P&L statement and tendered his resignation effective immediately.
In his apology, Mr Grivas said he felt unable to do his job properly as Treasurer because he was never provided access to the Council’s financial records or invoices in order to verify the P&L statement. Mr Grivas’ access was restricted despite requesting to see the financials.
While Mr Grivas stipulated in his apology that he believed “nothing untoward” was behind the restricted access to the financials, he did put forward a motion calling for an independent audit committee to review the last three years of financial statements.
This motion was passed by the committee members present and it was agreed that the audit committee would be made up of three people: Mr Grivas himself, Father John and Arthur Andronas.
It is believed the independent audit committee will begin its review early next year, with another meeting to be held to determine who will replace Mr Grivas as Treasurer.
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