Wiretapping probe veiled in confidentiality
Key players summoned to House committee over phone surveillance case cite regulatory constraints
With the invocation of confidentiality, key persons in the wiretapping case that were summoned to a special meeting of the Parliament’s Committee on Institutions and Transparency on Thursday did not mention anything specific, either regarding the reasons for the surveillance of the phone of PASOK leader Nikos Androulakis or whether the communications of other politicians were monitored.
However, according to information that emerged during the course of what turned out to be a marathon session, the Prime Minister’s Office was not informed in advance about these cases over the last three years.
The committee meeting was held under strict confidentiality as it dealt with national intelligence matters. Nonetheless, some information did reach press offices, some of it contradictory, that could however not be confirmed due to the aforementioned regulatory constraints.
According to converging information, both the former head of the the National Intelligence Agency (EYP), Panagiotis Kontoleon, and the former secretary to the prime minister, Grigoris Dimitriadis, cited confidentiality, and refused to answer either positively or negatively to questions regarding whether politicians were being monitored by EYP.
Citing the same confidentiality, Kontoleon also reportedly refused to talk about whether or not the file concerning Androulakis exists.
Furthermore, the intelligence service’s supervising prosecutor Vasiliki Vlachou and appeals prosecutor Konstantinos Tzavelas also reportedly cited secrecy and did not provide information on the reasons that led to the wiretapping of the PASOK president’s phone.
On the issue of surveillance by EYP during the SYRIZA-ANEL government, the intelligence agency’s former chief Yiannis Roubatis noted, according to some information, that legal tapping when done by EYP cannot be illegal. Unlike the others, however, he did not invoke secrecy and said that during his time, no political figures were monitored.
Asked, however, to comment on what had recently come to light about the phone tapping of the former head of state asset utilization fund TAIPED Stergios Pitsiorlas and Spyros Sagias, the former general secretary of SYRIZA-ANEL government, Roubatis reportedly said that the two politicians were being listened to because they were talking to people whose phones were being tapped.
