PASOK chief Nikos Androulakis has filed a new lawsuit in connection with attempts to illegally tap his phone with Predator spyware in 2021, when he was serving in the European Parliament and running for the leadership of the center-left party.
Androulakis’ latest attempt to get to the bottom of the phone-tapping scandal, which also affected other politicians, as well as journalists and business people, was reported by Ta Nea newspaper on Tuesday.
According to Ta Nea, Androulakis’ lawsuit comes in the wake of a report by the investigative news site Inside Story, which found that a key figure in the phone-tapping attempts – the person who appears to have paid for the spyware, in fact – has not been summoned for questioning by the judicial authorities investigating the case even though his name emerged 12 months ago.
In the meantime, journalist Thanasis Koukakis, who was also targeted in the same way at roughly the same time, has also filed a similar lawsuit based on Inside Story’s findings.
The lawsuits are aimed at this particular individual, but also at “all responsible parties,” and demand a thorough investigation into specific serious offenses, including treason, breach of telephone communications privacy and violations of personal data.
The news of Androulakis’ new lawsuit came just as a meeting was announced for December 4 between Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and the PASOK leader, who has been buoyed by his recent re-election and his party’s rise to the role of main opposition after the near-collapse of SYRIZA.
The wiretapping scandal has seriously strained relations between the two after Mitsotakis admitted that the National Intelligence Service (EYP), which is under his purview, had surveillance over dozens of public figures in Greece, but denied that the government has ever used the illegal software that was found on Androulakis’ telephone.