Acquittal recommended for top court deputy prosecutor in Novartis affair

A prosecutor on Tuesday recommended the acquittal of a deputy Supreme Court prosecutor who has been accused of interfering with an investigation into the Novartis bribery affair.

In a brief address to the Athens Court of Appeals, the judicial official argued that Ioannis Angelis had been acting in his capacity as supervisor of the corruption prosecutor’s office during a trip to Vienna in 2018 on which he is accused of refusing to cooperate with American authorities for the investigation of the purported scandal – with the main claim that 10 politicians supposedly took bribes from the Swiss drugmaker so far unsubstantiated.

According to Tuesday’s recommendation, Angelis did not refuse to accept evidence being provided by US officials on one of the politicians implicated in the case, but had said that any cooperation on such matters would have to go through the European Union Agency for Criminal Justice Cooperation.

There are no grounds to suggest that Angelis meant to intentionally harm the state, prosecutor Giorgos Economou said.