Kladas inquiry will not be buried
An Athens appeals court prosecutor yesterday overturned a decision by a prosecutor into an offshoot of the Zachopoulos scandal to shelve the probe, saying that many questions remain unanswered. In a lengthy report, Dimitris Dasoulas called for a fresh investigation into claims that the head of the financial crimes squad (SDOE) had tried to exchange favors with a high-profile journalist. He called for the investigation of several new leads and the re-examination of witnesses. The report was sent to the office of first instance prosecutor Maria Gane, who had been looking into claims made by investigative reporter Makis Triantafyllopoulos implicating a New Democracy MP and SDOE director Spyros Kladas in an offshoot of the Zachopoulos scandal. Triantafyllopoulos has claimed that New Democracy MP Costas Koukodimos asked him to stop mentioning Kladas in connection with the Zachopoulos case in exchange for SDOE dropping a probe into the origin of some 5 million euros deposited into the bank account of fellow journalist Themos Anastassiadis. The court of first instance prosecutor Gane suspended her investigation after several weeks, saying that she could not substantiate Triantafyllopoulos’s claims. Former Culture Ministry employee Evi Tsekou, who allegedly had sex with the ministry’s former general secretary Christos Zachopoulos before trying to blackmail him, is to testify before a magistrate on Monday.
