The controversial economist who tried to face down the International Monetary Fund and European Central Bank has broken his silence.

Yanis Varoufakis, Greece's former finance minister, has told the New Statesman that any deal reached with the so-called Troika will make things worse for his country.

The Troika refers to the IMF, the European Central Bank, and the European Commission. He called its proposals "absolutely impossible, totally nonviable, and toxic".

“This country must stop extending and pretending, we must stop taking on new loans pretending that we’ve solved the problem, when we haven’t; when we have made our debt even less sustainable on condition of further austerity that even further shrinks the economy; and shifts the burden further onto the have-nots, creating a humanitarian crisis,” Varoufakis told the publication.

Varoufakis became a darling of the international left for describing bailouts as "fiscal waterboarding" and for opposing austerity measures sought by the Troika. He stepped down as finance minister after Greeks voted no in a referendum on bailout terms.

He told the New Statesman that further austerity measures will only shrink the Greek economy. He also claimed that European governments that people might think would be most sympathetic to Greece turned out to be its "most energetic enemies".

Moreover, he claimed that if Greece ever achieves its objectives in its negotiations with its creditors, this would be the "greatest nightmare" of other debtor nations, such as Portugal, Spain, Italy, and Ireland.

“Were we to succeed in negotiating a better deal, that would obliterate them politically: they would have to answer to their own people why they didn’t negotiate like we were doing," Varoufakis told the New Statesman.