Deputy prosecutor testifies on Novartis case
Supreme Court deputy prosecutor Ioannis Angelis, who claims that the original Novartis investigation into alleged bribery of politicians and doctors by the Swiss company was mismanaged and undermined by the interventions of an unnamed politician, started testifying on Thursday.
He appeared at 10 a.m. before Evangelos Zacharis, another Supreme Court deputy prosecutor, who is probing the judicial handling of the Novartis case.
Angelis, who had been supervising the corruption prosecutors investigating the case involving 10 prominent politicians and the Swiss pharmaceutical giant, resigned on January 7, claiming that his colleagues and superiors had mishandled the probe and that charges against the Greek politicians implicated in the probe had essentially been fabricated.
He is the first prosecutor to testify on the case.
Of 10 politicians originally implicated in the alleged scandal, only former Socialist health minister Andreas Loverdos has been charged.
The probe has failed to turn up evidence of illicit payments to politicians.
