Although delayed for a few days, the announcement concerning the privatization of the Thessaloniki port came late on Thursday, by the country’s liquidation fund.

The Hellenic Republic Asset Development Fund has announced the sale of its 67% stake in Thessaloniki Port to Deutche Invest Equity Partners, Belterra Investments and CMA CGM’s ports division, Terminal Link.

The German-led joint venture – called South Europe Gateway Thessaloniki (SEGT) – beat out bids from International Container Terminal Services Inc. (ICTSI) and DP World to win the concession agreement.

Greece's new leftwing government has asked the heads of the state privatization agency to resign after halting state asset sales agreed under the international bailout program, the agency's chief executive Paschalis Bouchoris said on Friday.

He said both he and Emmanuel Kondylis, chairman of the Hellenic Republic Asset Development Fund (HRADF), had been told to leave by Deputy Finance Minister Nadia Valavani, the minister responsible for overseeing state revenues.

Greek auditors have blocked the $1.2 billion sale of a prime seaside property at the abandoned Athens airport Hellenikon, sources said on Wednesday, the country's biggest privatisation deal since the financial crisis.

In March, the country's privatisation agency HRADF picked Lamda Development, backed by China's Fosun and Abu Dhabi-based property firm Al Maabar, to turn the 620-hectare wasteland into a glitzy coastal resort.

The consortium was the sole bidder and won a 99-year lease for the area which spans three times the size of Monaco after offering 915 million euros.

A court official told Reuters on condition of anonymity that the auditor had blocked the sale because the tender terms violated the principles of transparency and equal treatment.

Fourteen regional airports in Greece are expected to pass to private companies in the next two months, according to the Hellenic Republic Asset Development Fund (HRADF) schedule. The transfer of management from the state to private owners will have a duration of up to 50 years.

As of September 30, binding offers from potential investors will be handed to HRADF. The procedure should take less than a month, although the competition has been held back from the original timeframe by candidates’ demand to be granted an extension in order to have more time to prepare their offers.

When news of the Greek debt crisis first broke in 2010, a number of German tabloids called on the country to pawn its cultural and natural heritage to pay off its debts. “Sell your islands, you bankrupt Greeks!” ran a headline of the ever tasteless Bild. “And sell the Acropolis too!” With the bailout of May 2010 in the making, the populist editors of the right-wing magazine, apparently oblivious to the historical sensitivities around the German annexation of foreign territories, stubbornly insisted: “We give you cash, you give us Corfu.”

Today, more than four years since the signing of the first memorandum of understanding, it seems that Germany’s nationalist media — along with the European investor class and the oligarchic Greek elite — are finally getting their way. Greece’s subservient government is now pushing hard to open up new frontiers for privatization, with some 77.000 state assets slated for sale, including a host of historic marinas and idyllic islands, a number of ancient palaces, and large stretches of the country’s spectacular and unspoilt coastline.

Earlier this year, the government announced that it would move ahead with its plans to sell off a number of beautiful buildings of great historic value at the foot of the Acropolis. The Guardian reported that “among the properties are refugee tenement blocks built to put up Greeks fleeing the Asia Minor disaster in 1922 and culture ministry offices housed in neo-classical buildings in the picturesque Plaka district … that were erected shortly after the establishment of the modern Greek state. Both are widely viewed as architectural gems.”

The announcement came on the heels of a controversial decision to rent out two of the most important archeological sites in Athens — the Stoa of Attalos, which sits in the ancient agora, and the Panathenaic Stadium — to companies for private events. Earlier, similar plans had been mooted by leading politicians of the ruling conservative party to lease out the Acropolis for photoshoots and other commercial and promotional activities.

The competition concerning the largest privatization in Greece, the Ellinikon International Airport project seems to have only one candidate left as one of the three stakeholders , Israeli company Elbit Cochin, expressed its intention not to proceed any further.

Given that London & Regional Properties has requested a four-month extension to submit its binding offer that is scheduled for tomorrow Thursday, February 27, the HRADF competition will go to the Greek company, Lamda Development.