PASOK, SYRIZA MPs leave wiretapping probe panel in protest, accuse ND of coverup
Opposition lawmakers participating in a parliamentary committee tasked with investigating Greece’s wiretapping scandal left in protest a preparatory panel meeting on Thursday, after the ruling Conservatives rejected what the MPs considered as “essential witnesses” in the probe.
The commission – where government lawmakers have a majority – will look into the tapping by the country’s secret service (EYP) of the phone of Nikos Androulakis, the leader of socialist PASOK/KINAL. It will also examine allegations that phones belonging to officials in Greece’s communist party were tapped in 2016, under a previous left-wing government. It will have at least a month to carry out the probe.
On Thursday, the panel was in the process of establishing the list of the individuals who will be summoned to appear before the committee.
Leaving the unfinished meeting, PASOK-KINAL rapporteur Evangelia Liagouli, accused the government majority of an attempted “cover-up.”
“New Democracy reached the point of not accepting any essential witness, not even the nephew of the prime minister, Grigoris Dimitriadis, who was dismissed by the prime minister himself as the political head of EYP, not even the wiretapped journalist Thanasis Koukakis, not even the witnesses proposed by the Communist Party for the wiretapping of its call center – persons whose testimonies are necessary to find the truth,” she said. “We will not be complicit.”
Liagouli, along with the second PASOK/KINAL lawmaker participating in the committee, briefed Parliament Speaker Konstantino Tassoula on the issue.
The current scandal broke after revelations that Nikos Androulakis, a European Parliament member and head of Greece’s third-largest political party, was put under surveillance for three months last year when he was running for his PASOK party’s leadership. Financial journalist Thanassis Koukakis also was under EYP surveillance, while he also discovered his phone has been hacked with illegal spyware Predator.
