The Greek Parliament created on Monday August 29 a special commission of inquiry responsible for shedding light on the wiretapping scandal which is shaking the conservative government.
A majority of 142 MPs out of the 299 present voted in favor of an investigation into the tapping of socialist Nikos Androulakis, leader of Pasok-Kinal – the third party in the Greek parliament – and MEP. No vote against was recorded, and the 157 parliamentarians of the New Democracy party, in power, abstained, according to the speaker of Parliament, Costas Tassoulas.
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Current since last year, the scandal exploded at the end of July when Nikos Androulakis filed a complaint denouncing an attempt to monitor his mobile phone via the spyware Predator. A few days later, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, referring to “a mistake”, was forced to admit that Nikos Androulakis had also been watched by the Greek intelligence services before he became leader of his party last year. Previously, the government had spent months defending itself against wiretapping charges brought by two Greek journalists, one of whom also claimed to have been spied on by both Predator and Greek intelligence.
The revelations of listening to Nikos Androulakis led to two resignations in early August in the entourage of Kyriakos Mitsotakis, that of the head of intelligence (EYP) Panagiotis Kontoleon and a close adviser to the Prime Minister. The latter assures that he had not been informed of the surveillance by the secret services of Nikos Androulakis, which he described as “politically unacceptable” even if it is technically legal. The case has weakened Kyriakos Mitsotakis, who hopes to be re-elected next year. According to a poll taken over the weekend, the gap between the ruling party and the left-wing Syriza party has narrowed to 6.3 percentage points from double digits in June.
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