Greek PM under pressure over tapping of opponent’s phone | Greece

An eavesdropping scandal that sees Greece’s intelligence chief and the head of his personal office resign within minutes; calls for further resignations amid revelations of “dark practices”, and a spy crisis likened to Watergate.

The Greek prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, is facing his toughest hour in office following the discovery that the mobile phone of his political opponent, the leader of the country’s third largest party, was tapped by order of EYP, the intelligence service that reports directly to his office.

“I never expected the Greek government to spy on me using the darkest practices,” the Pasok party head, Nikos Androulakis who is also a member of the European parliament, said Late Friday evening, the full extent of the espionage was revealed in a televised speech. “It is our democratic duty to protect the human rights and freedoms of Greek citizens. Today is a moment of truth for those whose arrogance and sense of impunity make them capable of anything.”

The prime minister’s Maximou office, only hours earlier, had revealed the resignation of Panagiotis Kontoleon, until then the much-revered EYP chief, for “incorrect actions”.

The news had followed the shock announcement that Mitsotakis’s nephew and most trusted aide, Grigoris Dimitriadis, had also stepped down – taking a bullet for his boss that was hoped would put the scandal to bed. Regarded as an eminence grise with wide-ranging powers, Dimitriadis had been Kontoleon’s point man in Maximou.

But by Sunday, as Mitsotakis acknowledged the wire-tapping had been a “huge and unforgivable mistake”, the resignations were being interpreted as an admission of guilt.

Likening the espionage scandal to Greece’s very own Watergate “that brutally insults our democracy”, the leftist former prime minister Alexis Tsipras vowed to leave no stone unturned in exposing the wrongdoing.

It was, he said, incumbent on the centre-right government to not only come clean about Androulakis – whose phone was monitored over a three-month period in the run-up to his election as Pasok leader last September – but others who reputedly had also been targeted.

“Instead of hypocritical apologies and lies, Mr Mitsotakis should say which other politicians and journalists have been followed,” said Tsipras is the leader of Syriza, the main opposition party. “This is not a huge and unforgivable mistake. It’s a huge scandal [that represents] the unforgivable arrogance of a regime, of a prime minister that thought no one could control him.”

The scandal, which has evoked the darkest days of military rule when opponents of the 1967-74 Colonels’ regime were regularly spied on, first broke when Androulakis revealed he had been informed by the European parliament of an attempt to bug his mobile phone with Predator malware.

After using the cybersecurity service created by the Strasbourg-based parliament to protect lawmakers’ phones from being illegally accessed, the MEP made this announcement. Predator is one of the most sophisticated spywares available. It can access encrypted messages, activate cameras and microphones on smartphones, and even unlock them.

Last week, Androulakis filed a complaint with prosecutors at the country’s supreme court detailing the wiretapping attempt.

Two Greek journalists – one covering migration, the other finance – have also taken legal action following allegations of similar illegal surveillance by a government heavily criticised internationally for restricting media freedom.

According to the MPs present, Kontoleon, spy chief, confessed in closed-door hearing before a parliamentary committee that the Greek intelligence services had monitored Thanassis Kukakis, the financial journalist, at the request of a foreign intelligence agency.

Initial government officials denied that the Predator malware revelations were responsible for the resignations. But sources were then quoted as saying that Androulakis’s mobile phone had indeed been tapped at the request of overseas intelligence services – and with the permission of a public prosecutor – but, while legal and conducted using conventional software, the prime minister had no knowledge of the surveillance and “would have stopped it”.

Greek media at the weekend identified the foreign spy services as being Ukrainian and Armenian, with some outlets attributing the request to the Pasok leader’s connections with “shady persons acting on behalf of Chinese interests”.

The administration was in the midst of its worst crisis since taking power in July 2019 and immediately attacked the line of defense as a complicated web of lies.

Androulakis called on Friday for the establishment of an investigative committee in Greece to investigate potential political responsibilities.

Mitsotakis, who controversially put EYP under Maximou’s control in one of his first acts in office, has said On Monday, he will address the nation in public. Sunday’s To Vima described him as saying: “I owe Nikos Androulakis an apology.”

Some see the Harvard-trained leader as a refreshing breath after years of crippling economic turmoil in Greece. He has been praised for his reform agenda and management style that are more American than Mediterranean. He has shown a willingness to take on multiple crises, even though he was the one who took over.

But Mitsotakis, who faces re-election next year under a new electoral law that will make it near impossible for his New Democracy party to form a government – even if, as projected, it comes first – has also come under growing fire for a leadership style that leaves little space for criticism.

“Absolute power corrupts,” said Giorgos Kyrtsos was the MEP who was expelled by New Democracy after openly criticising government treatment of media earlier in the year.

“Mitsotakis governs through Maximou, not the cabinet, in a system in which there are few checks and balances. His need to control has led to him losing control. This spy scandal is a very big crisis and will raise further questions about the true extent of his European liberal credentials.”