The Greek secret service bugged an important EU parliamentarian for months. Prime Minister Mitsotakis says he knew nothing and speaks of “dark forces”.
Doesn’t want to know anything: The Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis is unsuspecting in the wiretapping affair.
Greece has its “Watergate” scandal. At least that’s how the opposition sees it after it became known that the opposition politician Nikos Androulakis had been bugged for months by the Greek secret service EYP.
Androulakis is a member of the social democratic Pasok-KinAL and has been a member of the European Parliament since 2014. He was bugged while running for the Pasok presidency, which he has held since December 2021.
Greece’s conservative Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis condemned the process after several days of silence on Monday: “I knew nothing about it, and of course I would never have approved something like that,” said the New Democracy politician on television.
The public prosecutor’s office had been informed about the events, the wiretapping was legal, but wrong. After the election of Androulakis as Pasok chairman, the monitoring was stopped. Mitsotakis spoke of foreign and dark forces that wanted to destabilize the country. The process shook the public’s trust in the services.
«Arrogant, unrepentant and mendacious»
His political opponents don’t believe that Mitsotakis, who runs the secret service, knew nothing. The left-wing opposition party Syriza called for the Prime Minister’s resignation, calling him “arrogant, unrepentant and mendacious”.
The intercepted Androulakis himself said: “With his statement, the Prime Minister once again presents himself as innocent by using the narrative of a ‘legal error’ to justify a crime.” Mitsotakis is trying to buy time, but the truth will come out soon.
On Friday, the head of the intelligence service, Panagiotis Kontoleon, and the Prime Minister’s office chief, Grigoris Dimitriadis – a nephew of Mitsotakis – resigned in the wake of the affair. The prime minister promised reforms to the intelligence service.
Internal changes are intended to ensure more transparency and strengthen parliamentary control. A parliamentary investigative committee is also to determine the background and clients of the wiretapping affair. Parliament is ending its summer break early to consider the affair, it was announced on Tuesday.
The motives and clients of the bugging operation are still completely in the dark, and it is also not known whether other politicians were bugged. At the weekend, the EYP said it had acted at the request of the Ukrainian and Armenian secret services.
They were interested in Androulakis because of his allegedly close relationship with Russia and Turkey, but also because of his work in an EU trade committee dealing with China. The Ukrainian ambassador to Greece, Serhi Shutenko, called the allegations “detached from reality”, while his Armenian colleague dismissed them as “shameless lies”.
1/2 bizarre times! International organization accuses the victim of war of violating the laws of war. Foreign intelligence accuses Ukraine of tapping on its citizens
Let me point this out – ?? has never requested that from Greek counterpart.These claims are divorced from reality
— Sergii Shutenko (@Sergii_Shutenko) August 7, 2022
Illegal spy software Predator in action
According to Androulakis, at the same time as the Greek secret service was wiretapping, there was an attempt to tap his phone with the illegal Predator spy software. He got that from the Inspection of the European Parliament’s Cyber Security Service Experienced.
Predator, which is similar to Pegasus software, allows access to mobile devices, including passwords, browser history and similar information. It can also take screen recordings and activate the microphone. The government in Athens has long denied having bought or used Predator software.
However, a Greek journalist is said to have been spied on with the Predator. The case is also mentioned in the EU’s most recent Rule of Law Report. the Google’s Threat Analysis Group (Tag) writes, that “we anticipate likely government-backed actors buying these exploits operating in (at least) Egypt, Armenia, Greece, Madagascar, Ivory Coast, Serbia, Spain and Indonesia.”
The new management of the Greek secret service should now also investigate whether illegal surveillance software like Predator was used by third parties, i.e. whether there are state actors who operate without any controls.