Greece’s Anti-Corruption Chief Denies Influencing Novartis Whistleblower Case

ATHENS -  Facing a parliamentary probe into her handling of a case into whether the Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis paid bribes to Greek politicians, anti-corruption chief Eleni Touloupaki  denied wrongdoing and said she's the victim of a “coordinated attempt at moral extermination.”

Testifying before Deputy Supreme Court Prosecutor Evangelos Zacharis, she and two colleagues denied charges of abuse of power, dereliction of duty and making false statements in the stalled case.

Ten political rivals of the former ruling Radical Left SYRIZA were accused of taking money from Novartis to help the country gain a bigger share but seven were cleared.

The case began when three self-claimed whistleblowers said they overheard the politicians may have taken money in a case based on hearsay and as they were not able to provide any evidence.

SYRIZA’s former alternate justice minister Dimitris Papangelopoulos is  the target of a growing investigation into whether he tried to help engineer a fake scandal to get the party's rivals as it was fading in the polls before losing snap elections in 2019.

The three charged prosecutors said they believed the witnesses who made the claims.

Papangelopoulos wants more time to prepare his defense and gave the committee a list of witnesses he would like summoned before the panel looking into whether there are grounds for a criminal investigation into his handling of the case, said the newspaper Kathimerini.