Prosecutor shelves probe into ADAE members over alleged leaks to the press
The Athens Prosecutor’s Office has closed the case against four members of the independent authority responsible for privacy, ADAE, for allegedly leaking information about the wiretapping of a journalist to the press, Kathimerini understands.
The preliminary investigation was completed at the end of January by the First Instance Prosecutor Nikolaos Stefanatos and his recommendation was accepted by the – hierarchically superior – Appeals Prosecutor Katerina Antoniou. “There is no case of initiating a criminal prosecution, since there is no indication of any criminal activity being committed,” the prosecutor’s decision states, according to information. “There was no violation of the duty of confidentiality on the part of the defendants during the exercise of their work.”
Stefanos Gritzalis, a member of the Authority, Katerina Papanikolaou, a former member of ADAE, and two more members were summoned on November 9 as suspects for allegedly leaking the numbers of the three decrees ordering the surveillance of journalist Thanasis Koukakis, who was targeted by the national intelligence agency EYP and the illegal spyware Predator in the summer of 2020.
The investigation into the ADAE members was ordered by the then Supreme Court Prosecutor Isidoros Dogiakos, just two days before the end of his tenure.
But why did Dogiakos target the specific members? As Kathimerini had published on November 11, the reason was the surprise audit that the four ADAE members had carried out at the premises of telecommunications provider Cosmote in July 2021 to find out whether or not the provider had implemented the required legal procedures in lifting the privacy of communications.
In his complaint filed with the Supreme Court in May 2022, Koukakis had presented the numbers of the decrees ordering his surveillance.
Dogiakos had considered this as evidence that the four auditors had been informed about the decrees which they then presumably leaked. He ignored, however, the fact those decree numbers had been revealed in an investigative report by Reporters United a month before, while Koukakis himself had stated that he had based his complaint on this article in April 2022.
The Greek wiretapping scandal involves dozens of state officials, journalists and businesspeople been wiretapped with the use of state surveillance, as well as the malicious illegal spyware Predator.
