Vaxevanis acquitted for publishing Lagarde list
An Athens court on Wednesday acquitted journalist and Hot Doc publisher Costas Vaxevanis on charges of breaching privacy laws for publishing a list containing the names of Greeks with bank accounts in a HSBC branch in Geneva, Switzerland.
Vaxevanis was cleared last year of the same charges but was ordered to stand a new trial.
On Wednesday, a public prosecutor urged the court to find the journalist guilty for publishing the names of the 2,059 depositors comprising the so-called Lagarde list, arguing that the people whose names appeared on the list did not consent to their publication. He further argued that the published list also contained the depositors’ profession.
Testifying in court on the same day, Vaxevanis said that the reason behind the list’s publication had been to unveil the kind of widespread corruption that has been plaguing Greece in the last few decades, arguing that this corruption was reflected on the list.
