Deputy justice minister queries meeting with prosecutor
Alternate Justice Minister Dimitris Papangelopoulos appeared Thursday to distance himself from his superior, Justice Minister Nikos Paraskevopoulos, over the latter’s decision to call and meet with a prosecutor while she was overseeing a probe into businessman Andreas Vgenopoulos.
“I cannot envisage a situation in which a judge or prosecutor is handling a case and also visits a minister,” Papangelopoulos told Parliament’s Institutions and Transparency Committee. “I believe that not even a friendly discussion could take place.”
When pressed further by opposition MPs about his comments and Paraskevopoulos’s contact with appeals court prosecutor Georgia Tsatani, the alternate minister suggested that a meeting to discuss “abstract legal matters that have nothing to do with the case” would be acceptable.
