Greek Journalists Union Denounces Court Summons For Anti-Corruption Reporters

The Athens Journalist Union (ESEIA) has condemned a court for is summoning two investigative journalists, saying they were targeted over the alleged bribery case involving the Swiss drug company Novartis.

TV journalist Gianna Papadakou, and Kostas Vaxevanis, publisher of the site Documento – who in 2012 was acquitted of publishing the names of more than 2,000 Greeks with secret Swiss bank accounts – are the two journalists who have been summoned to be questioned.

Vaxevanis reportedly faces four charges based on a case file that the newspaper Kathimeri said was built by months of investigation into the circumstances that saw 10 politicians accused in the Novartis case. Nine of those were cleared of charges made by two whistleblowers.

Papadakou has also covered stories about wealthy people allegedly evading taxes, which is common in Greece, where it can take a decade or longer for tax authorities to catch up with allegations of tax evasion and prosecutions are rare.

“ESIEA expresses its support for Gianna Papadakou and stresses that reporting and investigative journalism, which are ingredients of free press protected by the Constitution, cannot be prosecuted,” ESIEA said in its statement.

Papadakou told the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) that she was called to testify about her reporting of the Novartis case and claims by a Greek-Israeli businessman that she and others tried to extort money from him.

Novartis agreed in 2020 to pay $347 million as part of a settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commision over violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. As part of the settlement, Novartis acknowledged making illegal payments to Greek healthcare providers and officials, in contrast to its previous denials..

Former prosecutor Eleni Touloupaki who had been investigating Novartis, was removed from the case after being accused of being over zealous and unable to prove accusations made by the alleged whistleblowers who said only that they overheard the politicians discussing bribes.

Touloupaki told OCCRP then that she was being politically prosecuted for continuing to investigate, while Papadakou said the real reason for the accusations against her is her reporting about people suspected of hiding their wealth from tax authorities.

“They are targeting me because I was reporting about people on the Lagarde-List and because I was a witness in the Parliamentary inquiry,” she said, referring to the same list that Vaxevanis published, which resulted in no major prosecutions.

The list was named for former French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde – now head of the European Central Bank – who handed it over to Greek authorities when Greece was struggling with an economic crisis that eventually required three international bailouts of 326 billion euros ($373 billion) to fix.

In a December 2012 report, Papadakou said that one of the names on the list was that of an employee of a company owned by the same Greek-Israeli businessman who denounced her.

Papadakou said that the ongoing process against her was “invalid,” and complained the Greek judiciary violated procedures. She filed a complaint with the European Court of Human Rights, which in 2021 said her case was admissible.

The summoning of the journalists comes after a media freedom coalition fact-finding mission looked into a new law for reporting fake news about COVID-19 which could jail journalists and the murder of investigative reporter Giorgos Karaivaz, who wrote about corruption and organized crime.