New Democracy officials resign over voters’ list
Two conservative officials resigned and one was ousted on Friday amid a scandal involving the leak of an unspecified number of email addresses of Greek voters residing abroad.
New Democracy MEP Anna-Michelle Asimakopoulou announced that she would not be running in the June European Parliament election after she was accused of breaching General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) rules by sending mass campaign emails to voters without their permission.
“My conscience does not permit me to inadvertently contribute to efforts that undermine the institution of postal voting, the Mitsotakis government, or the reputation of Greece,” she said in a statement Friday, adding that it was now the responsibility of the judicial authorities to clarify the matter. The MEP said she submitted information about the leak to the Hellenic Data Protection Authority, which has opened its own investigation.
Her announcement was followed by the resignation of the general secretary of the Interior Ministry, Michalis Stavrianoudakis, and the dismissal of New Democracy’s secretary for diaspora affairs, Nikos Theodoropoulos. The resignations came after an internal investigation carried out by the Prime Minister’s Office, which Kyriakos Mitsotakis had announced, saying, “There are questions that must be answered.”
According to government spokesperson Pavlos Marinakis, in May 2023 the list of email addresses was allegedly acquired by an associate of Stavrianoudakis, who forwarded them to Theodoropoulos. The list was later passed on to Asimakopoulou. He said that the “data was passed on some time – weeks, months – before the emails were sent,” and that Theodoropoulos had it in his possession “many months before,” some time between the two general elections of 2023.
Government sources were quick to clarify that the data leak “is purely a matter of personal data protection” and not of election security, as the incident predates the law that allowed postal voting. They also said that Mitsotakis was quick to act and shed light on the leak.
