Greek finance job goes to civil servant Antonis Samaras, the Greek centre-right leader, has made a surprise appointment to the post of finance minister, choosing a career public servant with a close knowledge of the country's finances and a radical leftwing past. Vassilios Rapanos will take the key finance portfolio and may attend to­day's Luxembourg meeting of eurozone finance ministers. After 30 years working on Greek public finances. . . I think I now have quite a good knowledge of them," the new minister told the Financial Times on Wednesday. Mr Rapanos, 64, a Canadian-trained economist and specialist in public finances, faces the task of convincing international lenders that Greece can stick to the stringent terms accompanying its huge bailout. He declined to comment on his plans until he had been formally sworn in. "He has some strong views on revenue collection and how to combat tax evasion," said a colleague of Mr Rapanos at the University of Athens. We hope he'll now be able to put them into effect. During a long career in public service, Mr Rapanos headed an influential state think-tank and planning office, for a decade, working on public finances and institutional economics, and teaches at Athens university. His first experience of handling European issues came in 2000 when he took over as Athens representative on the EU's monetary committee in the run-up to Greece's entry to the euro. At the same time he served as chief economic adviser to the finance minister, promoting reforms that contributed to sustained growth rates of above 4 per cent yearly and a steady rise in tax revenues. In 2009 Mr Rapanos became the government-appointed chairman of National Bank of Greece, the country's largest commercial lender. He has also worked for two of Greece's largest public sector corporations. He is well known in Greece for his involvement in a leftwing resistance group that staged bomb attacks against targets linked to the military junta that ruled the country between 1967 and 1974. After the group was unmasked by the secret police, Mr Rapanos, then a student of economics and business, was convicted by a military court and sentenced to a four-year prison term. This included a spell in the notorious Ottoman-era Yedi Kule jail in the northern city of Thessaloniki, where Mr Rapanos unexpectedly found a mentor: Sakis Karageorgas, a leading leftwing Greek economist jailed in a cell on the same corridor. "Jail became my university," Mr Rapanos said. It was a fortunate experience. I read a lot of books and I discovered how strong you can be in such circumstances. Released in 1973, when the junta granted an amnesty to most political prisoners, the young economist finished his bachelor's degree then left for postgraduate studies in Canada. He completed a PhD at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, specialising in public finances. Mr Samaras was sworn in as prime minister on Wednesday, heading a three-party coalition government committed to keeping the country in the euro and pushing ahead with its €174bn bailout. His New Democracy party's coalition partners are two moderate leftwing parties, the Panhellenic Socialist Movement (Pasok) and the Democratic Left. A joint policy statement was due to be released on Wednesday night, said an ND adviser. The three parties will control a strong working majority of 179 seats in the 300-member parliament.