Novartis panel session cancelled after barred MPs show up
The special parliamentary committee tasked with probing the judicial handling of the Novartis affair cancelled its session on Thursday after two opposition MPs who had been barred from the panel turned up.
SYRIZA MPs Pavlos Polakis and Dimitris Tzanakopoulos attempted to sit on the panel on Thursday, even though the majority has previously decided to exempt them from the proceedings on the grounds that the two leftist lawmakers are witnesses in the investigation and this poses a conflict of interests.
Their antics prompted New Democracy’s MPs to walk out of the room, arguing that the procedure would be illegal if the two ousted lawmakers were in attendance.
The panel is tasked with investigating whether former SYRIZA alternate justice minister Dimitris Papangelopoulos tried to influence the judicial inquiry into claims by anonymous witnesses that 10 officials in governments prior to that of SYRIZA’s had accepted bribes from the Novartis pharmaceutical firm.
