Papagelopoulos’s referral to the Special Court is proposed for serious interference in justice

By Ioanna Mandrou

For a series of interventions in justice for many cases, including the freezing of accounts of the publisher of SKAI Giannis Alafouzos, the prosecutor Eleni Metsovitou-Flouri is requested to refer to the Special Court the former minister Dimitris Papagelopoulos.

According to the prosecutor, it appears from the investigations that in the summer of 2016 he exercised Dim. Papagelopoulos unbearable pressure on then-financial prosecutor Pans. Athanassiou to speed up the tax audits for Mr. Alafouzos and to freeze his accounts so that he can not take part in the competition for the television licenses.

The prosecutor also refers to pressure by Dimitris Papagelopoulos to incriminate journalist George Papachristos, but also the tax audits of the late Andreas Vgenopoulos.

Finally a referral is proposed for the former minister, in addition to the indictment of ten politicians in the Novartis case, and for the pressures he exerted on prosecutors, such as Eleni Raikou, Georgia Tsatani and Pan. Athanasios.

The excerpt of the proposal in detail of the Deputy Prosecutor of the Supreme Court Eleni Metsovitou-Flouris.

He intervened in the work of the then Financial Prosecutor Panagiotis Athanassiou, in the following cases:

at the end of September 2C15 but also during the year 2016, while the aforementioned Financial Prosecutor was investigating the particularly serious cases concerning the lists of Lagarde, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, UK and the 65 o d of remittances abroad, intervened his work, regarding cases concerning media owners, owners of television stations-channel managers, namely Ioannis Alafouzos and Andreas Vgenopoulos, demanding that the prosecutor Athanassiou ensure that the tax audit against them is completed quickly. In order to achieve this, he asked the prosecutor to put pressure on the competent tax auditors, expressing the threat, especially in the case of Andreas Vgenopoulos, that if the tax audit is not completed immediately, he will report through the television stations that the auditors control, they have snatched them from Vgenopoulos, although he had no evidence of such a thing. With this act he intended to cause harm to Andreas Vgenopoulos, who, in this way and in a hurry, would become a suspect and prosecuted for crimes without prior adequate and thorough control of the available evidence. Regarding the ongoing investigation against Ioannis Alafouzos, around August 2016, he exerted unbearable and special pressures, in order to quickly end the tax audit in order, after the completion of the audit, to freeze his bank accounts and accordingly how to be excluded from the licensing process of television stations due to lack of financial solvency. As a means of pressure, he passed the information to the press, in which he stated that the prosecutor Athanassiou was short-sighted about the tax audit against Ioannis Alafouzos, fearing attacks by the media of the latter’s interests and because he was a Panathinaikos fan. 3) In the same way, he repeatedly intervened in the work of the above-mentioned Financial Prosecutor for the cases of the Governor of Piraeus Bank, Michael Salla. While the Financial Prosecutor’s Office was pending an investigation against the specific banker, he contacted the prosecutor Athanassiou several times by phone and asked him about the course of his cases, ie if there were indications against him and whether he would be referred. He also asked to be informed of the views and positions of the Assistant Prosecutors on these cases, which they were investigating, he also asked to be informed when the Assistant Prosecutors would finish and submit their findings. When, at the end of 2016, the relevant findings were submitted to the prosecutor Athanassiou, which included a suggestion for the referral of Michael Sallas and many other bank executives for criminal offenses, such as infidelity, money laundering with the law on abusers, etc. , was informed of this fact by an unknown source of his own, called P. Athanassiou and urged him to keep these cases and not to rush to prosecute Sallas and the others. Then, at the beginning of April 2017, when criminal charges were brought against Mikhail Sallas and many other executives of Piraeus Bank, the accused called the prosecutor Athanassiou and asked him for explanations, because he had not previously informed him about this development, stating the strong his dissatisfaction with this fact. By doing so, he intended to benefit persons prosecuted, at least by delaying the prosecution of them, although the relevant findings of the Assistant Prosecutors justified the prosecution at the time it took place.

For the above-mentioned act of breach of duty, with the most partial acts allegedly committed against prosecutors Tsatani, Raikou and Athanassiou and which are a continuation of the same criminal conduct with a section of deceit, there is sufficient evidence of guilt, capable of accusation of the accused before the hearing and the relevant charge must be made against him.