Stournaras says ‘brazen’ attempt at character assassination has ended
With the shelving Thursday of a legal suit against him involving Swiss drugmaker Novartis, Greek central bank governor Yannis Stournaras said that a “brazen procedure of slander and character assassination” had officially come to an end “after a 20-month delay.”
“It is now up to the competent institutions (the Parliament, Justice) to reveal the real culprits of this miserable plot, as well as their accomplices,” he said after the top corruption prosecutor Eleni Touloupaki shut the case.
Stournaras was the seventh high ranking official to be cleared out of an initial 10 who had been implicated in the case, including former prime ministers Antonis Samaras and Panagiotis Pikrammenos, and ex-socialist minister Evangelos Venizelos.
Also Thursday, Touloupaki sent the case file concerning former PASOK minister Andreas Loverdos to Parliament so as to receive approval to conduct a probe into bribery charges against him. In response, Loverdos issued a scathing statement that the move by the prosecutor was an “obvious attempt to retroactively justify the illegalities committed over three years with the framework of the Novartis conspiracy.”
“Because I have the truth, honesty and support of the people on my side, desperate and atrocious actions cannot touch me,” he said.
