“No one can give a logical answer as to why my name was deleted from the translation of the FBI Novartis document,” PASOK-KINAL MP and former Health Minister Andreas Loverdos told Skai TV on Friday morning. It was one more of Loverdos’ statements after documentonews newspaper and koutipandoras website published on Thursday afternoon the original FBI document and the Greek official translation.
The FBI document from 25/5/2017 informed Greek authorities in written how and to whom the kickbacks were paid by Novartis to officials dealing the medicines. In Athens the investigator in charge of the case sent the original document for to the Foreign Ministry for official translation. In the translated document added to the case file, the name of the ex minister was deleted.
The name of Loverdos and some of other former and current officials were just missing on the Greek translation done by the Translation Service of the Foreign Ministry, while they were and thus in bold on the original FBI document.
The name of Loverdos and some of other former and [current] officials were just missing on the Greek translation done by the Translation Service of the Foreign Ministry, while they were and thus in bold on the original FBI document. via daily efsyn.
“Of course there is (s.s. his name in the document, via ethnos.gr). It is a very well-known document from 2017. It had to come to Parliament from 2020 when the pre-investigation took place,” said Loverdos who served as Health Minister 2010-2012 in the first two years of the bailout agreements.
On Thursday evening, Loverdos’ first reaction was to issue a statement accusing main opposition SYRIZA of throwing “mud” at him and called them “professional slanderers of politics.”
Also late on the same day, the Foreign Ministry issued a statement saying that “it does not bear any responsibility for the incident,” stating that the translation of the FBI document was undertaken by a private translator and that the ministry was not obliged to review the translation result.
The Ministry claimed further that “the translation service was abolished in summer 2021” when the document translation bears the date in April 2021.
As news took dimensions of a fireball on social media, the translator told media that all the four names were on the translated text she delivered, implying that the text was alternated by someone else. “There are more names,” she told daily avgi.gr
Friday noon, the owner of documentonews. Costas Vaxevanis, filed a lawsuit against the translator apparently in an effort to enforce official investigation on the issue as everybody involved declared “lack of knowledge” about the disappearance of the names.
“Let the Justice find out who deleted the names,” Vaxevanis said.
Both the media publications as well as Vaxevanis’ lawsuit reportedly mobilized the prosecutor of the First Instance Court in Athens who will have to dig deep to find out who falsified the FBI document in its Greek version.
Former anti-corruption chief prosecutor Eleni Touloupaki who was investigating the Novartis scandal when it broke out in December 2016 and was later prosecuted by Greek authorities, testified to prosecutor on Friday morning about the distorted Greek translation document, koutipandoras.gr report.
PS The Novartis kickbacks scandal in Greece is a never ending story until someone takes investigation seriously without bowing to political pressure.
