Greece's Wiretapping scandal: the chronicle of a cover-up

The wiretapping case had a “happy ending” for the National Security Service and the government of Kyriakos Mitsotakis, since the Supreme Court announced that it will only prosecute four private persons for misdemeanours. Here are all the steps that the investigation failed to take.

 

by Eliza Triantafillou / Tasos Telloglou

 

Part 5 - The money trail that no one followed

 

On October 23, 2023, the day on which the Prosecutors of First Instance were suddenly removed from the investigation, the Tax Police Department of the Financial Police delivered the findings of the preliminary investigation of the bank accounts of individuals and legal entities involved; it was the investigation which had been requested by the Prosecutor's Office in December 2022.

The findings of the Financial Police show that Intellexa paid a company of an Israeli-born Czech national EUR 165,494 in 2020, EUR 299,905 in 2021 and EUR 91,050 in 2022. Intellexa's affiliate Apollo Technologies paid another company, owned by the same person, EUR 83,300 in 2021 and EUR 108,200 in 2022. Another group company, Feroveno Limited, paid a third company of the Czech national a total of EUR 2,200,000, of which EUR 13,040 goes directly to him. The financial police never established who were the actual beneficiaries of the companies, for a sum that between 2020-2022 approaches EUR 3 million. According both to information that we published in April 2022 and to more recent stories published in foreign media, this person designed the fake websites that were used to trap mobile phones with the Predator spy software.

On top of the above, the Deputy Prosecutor of the Supreme Court did not request judicial assistance for the opening of the accounts of all the companies affiliated with the Greek Intellexa AE in foreign jurisdictions, with which the Greek company had regular transactions. Nor was the help of the Money Laundering Authority ever used (although it was offered). It should be noted that in order to establish a felony, it would have to be proven, inter alia, that there was a financial benefit of more than 120,000 euros from the interception of personal data.

The prosecution investigation in both phases (Prosecutors of the Prosecutor's Office, Deputy Prosecutor of the Supreme Court) avoided dealing with the initial phase of the Israeli company's establishment in Athens in the spring and summer of 2020. At that time the surveillance system was launched, recording the conversations of those who had dealings with the Group Naval frigate company and those involved in the confrontation with Turkey in the Aegean in August 2020 (the Oruc Reis case).

Source, links:

https://insidestory.gr/article/wiretapping-scandal-chronicle-cover

 

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