Bank staffer kills himself in Acropolis leap: police

A man working for struggling Greek state bank ATE died after jumping from the Acropolis in Athens Thursday, police said.

The 45-year-old died from serious injuries at an Athens hospital after the 100-metre (300-foot) fall from the rocky plateau that houses the ancient citadel, Greece’s top archaeological site.

He had previously told his colleagues at ATE that he was “stepping out briefly and would return,” a police source said.

Police found a note on the man’s body that bore just his name.

A site guard had earlier told AFP: “The man jumped and fell on to the Theatre of Dionysus below. He was alone and did not seem to be in a normal mental state.”

Police said the incident occurred at 0630 GMT, at a time the Acropolis is visited by scores of tourists.

ATE Bank, Greece’s agricultural lender, is earmarked for recapitalisation and restructuring by the new coalition government after failing two stress tests.

The release of the bank’s first-quarter results have been delayed.

The state had planned to sell 25 percent of its 76-percent stake in the bank under a major privatisation push undertaken in return for EU-IMF loans.

Suicides are on the rise in Greece as the country slogs through a five-year recession that has left over a million people jobless. Salary cuts and tax hikes have compounded the difficulties for many people.

In April, a retired pharmacist fatally shot himself under a cypress tree in the capital’s Syntagma Square, about 100 metres (yards) from parliament, saying government austerity measures had wiped out his pension and left him in penury.