ECB sued to ensure disclosure of Greece swaps

Bloomberg News filed a lawsuit against the European Central Bank, seeking to make it disclose documents showing how Greece used derivatives to hide its fiscal deficit and helped trigger the region’s sovereign debt crisis. The suit asks EU’s General Court in Luxembourg to overturn a decision by the ECB not to disclose two internal documents drafted for the bank’s six-member executive board in Frankfurt this year. The notes show how Greece used swaps to hide its borrowings, according to a March 3 cover page attached to the papers obtained by Bloomberg News.

ECB President Jean-Claude Trichet withheld the documents after the European Union and International Monetary Fund led a 110 billion-euro bailout ($144 billion) for Greece.

The dossier should be disclosed to stop governments from using the derivatives in that way again and show how EU authorities acted on information they had on the swaps, according to the suit, filed by Bloomberg Finance LP, the parent of Bloomberg News.