The Financial Prosecutor’s Office has decided to lift the protection status of witnesses in a bribery case involving Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis, doctors and public officials following requests from political figures whose names were implicated in the case.
Lifting of the witnesses “protection status” may have a grave political impact as the Novartis scandal in Greece broke out during the Tsipras government.
According to media reports, the prosecutors decision enables not only the lifting of the witnesses anonymity and publication of their real identities but also their possible persecution by their “victims” as well as revelations about who was behind them instructing them to such a “plot” as the New Democracy called the scandal.
Now former Prime Minister Antonis Samaras, the current Bank of Greece Governor Yiannis Stournaras, Minister of Health Adonis Georgiadis, and former minister Andreas Loverdos will be able to all take legal action against the protected witnesses.
All four politicians had appealed against the protection of two witnesses, given the code names “Ekaterini Kelesi” and “Maximos Sarafis.” The protected witnesses implicated Samaras, Stournaras, Georgiadis and Loverdos in the Novartis scandal.
The Novartis case has involved probes into allegations that doctors and public officials had accepted kickbacks from the company in a period spanning 2006 to 2015.
“The independent Greek Judiciary today issued a landmark decision, removing the ‘hoods’ from the fake witnesses of the Novartis plot,” government spokesman, Pavlos Marinakis, stressed in a statement after the removal of the protection status for the two protected witnesses in Novartis case.
Earlier former PM Antonis Samaras expressed in a statement his satisfaction with this development, as did Andreas Loverdos and Adonis Georgiadis.
“The decision of the Court is particularly important. Because the way is now wide open for the full and official disclosure of the Novartis plot,” Samaras emphasized adding “the causes and protagonists of this wretchedness will be revealed. I am very happy about this development. The moment of truth is coming. Until the end. For everything – and for everyone!”
PS removing the protection and anonymity of protected witnesses in the case of Novartis is indeed a “landmark” decision that will in fact silence any witness in a public fund embezzlement scandal.
