RARELY is a Greek official sacked for "ethical reasons." An exception is Stelios Stavridis, the boss of Taiped, the privatisation agency, who was dismissed on August 18th. His mistake was to have flown on a private jet belonging to a Greek oil tycoon, Dimitris Melissanidis, one of the buyers of a 33% stake in Opap, the state gambling company, hours after the €652m ($872m) deal was signed. A picture (above) of Mr Stavridis sitting next to a smiling stewardess appeared in ProtoThema, an Athens tabloid. Mr Stavridis denies wrongdoing: he merely accepted Mr Melissanidis's offer of a lift home to the island of Kefalonia to resume his summer holiday, rather than take a commercial flight the next day. Conveniently, the plane was due to make a refuelling stop on Kefalonia before taking Mr Melissanidis and his friends to France. The explanation failed to save the third Taiped boss to go in 13 months: yet another sign of the woes besetting Greece's privatisation programme. The policy is contentious and the centre-right government of Antonis Samaras has only a five-seat majority in parliament. The main opposition party, Syriza, says it will reverse all the sales. At this rate, that won't be hard. International creditors" original target of 50 billion in revenues by 2016 was cut to a more realistic 15 billion. Only 5 billion has been raised so far. This year's flagship sale, of the gas utility, Depa, expected to raise close to 1 billion, collapsed when Gazprom, the only shortlisted bidder, pulled out at the last minute amid worries in the European Commission about its market-abusing habits. When Germany's finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, broke a taboo by admitting publicly this week that Greece would need yet another bail-out, he was merely stating the obvious.