Gerapetritis: We never supplied illegal software – Questions from the opposition

LAST UPDATE: 20.11

The meeting of the Parliament’s Institutions and Transparency Committee on the case of the attempt to trap the mobile phone of N. Androulakis was concluded with strong objections.

The Greek State has never procured illegal surveillance software and there is neither directly nor indirectly such a contract, Minister of State Giorgos Gerapetritis reportedly clarified on behalf of the government

At the Commission, Mr. Gerapetritis reportedly emphasized that Greece has one of the strictest frameworks for legal connections, while disclosure is not made in cases where there is a legal connection for reasons of national security, as is the case in all countries around the world and it was mentioned in the cases of hybrid warfare or in cases of espionage on the part of the neighbor.

Answering a question from Haris Kastanidis from PASOK-KINAL about whether there is a contract of the EYP with a certain Krikel company, he mentioned that this particular company did not sign anything with the current government, but in 2018 during SYRIZA and with the signature of Mr. Toska.

The Minister of Digital Policy Kyriakos Pierrakakis also took the floor, who according to the same information presented a 2018 map of the presence of illegal software in the Facebook report, which lists seven illegal software, but also a European Parliament report that records attempts against five ministers and prime minister, attempt on European Council President Charles Michel and 300 Pegasus cases in Hungary.

Based on the same information, PASOK-KINAL rapporteur Haris Kastanidis and Giorgos Katrougalos from SYRIZA tried to connect the attempted entrapment abroad that Mr. Androulakis denounced with the case of journalist Thanasis Koukakis, the KKE complaints from 2016 about surveillance in Perissos but also publications of the newspapers Dimokratia and EFSYN about hacking and alleged surveillance of 12-year-old refugee children and lawyers for immigrants.

However, from other parliamentary sources, it is reported that the commander of the EYP admitted that the phone of journalist Thanasis Koukakis was monitored, at the request of a foreign country.

ND sources from the Institutions and Transparency Committee responded by stressing that “it is unthinkable to leak in a discussion which is characterized by lifelong secrecy. Regarding the content, the commander of the EYP, in an unrelated matter, not connected to the Koukaki issue, said that information coming from foreign secret services is also evaluated. That is to say, the obvious. Absolutely no connection to the specific case. This is an improbable montage precisely because it was a secret conversation.”

Ch. Kastanidis: Major issue of Democracy

According to other information, it was pointed out by Haris Kastanidis that the attempt to trap the mobile phone of Nikos Androulakis constitutes a major issue of Democracy and Transparency, as the leader of the third party and the PASOK-Movement for Change faction were targeted. The clarification of the case is not a personal issue, but concerns the need to safeguard democracy and institutions. It is no coincidence at this political juncture that only the President of PASOK-Movement for Change was identified as a possible victim of entrapment.

Mr. Kastanidis is said to have addressed the Commander of the EYP and asked if Mr. Kontoleon knew the Prime Minister before his appointment as the head of the EYP and if he had contacts with persons named in reports about spyware.

During the meeting, the dissension, which the government representative Yiannis Oikonomou had publicly raised in previous statements regarding the Koukakis case, was highlighted. He had talked then about private individuals who do surveillance.

The EYP must say who these individuals are. Were the individuals in question investigated? If not, they are dangerous, because how will civil life and citizens be protected? Why was the landscape left unregulated so that anyone could freely use such heavy tracking and trapping systems?

G. Katrougalos: Joint Koukaki-Androulakis monitoring center

SYRIZA went on the attack after the end of the meeting, through G. Katrougalos:

“The government has continued today the attempt to cover up its very real responsibilities for this phenomenon of multiple surveillance. Nevertheless, there is strong evidence linking it to it, as an example I mention evidence known even before the committee meeting, such as 3 reports from December 2021 of Google, Facebook, the best-known laboratory of the University of Toronto for these issues that attribute the interceptions using the “Predator” software to literally “government-backed entities in Greece”, said the head of the Department of Foreign Affairs SYRIZA.

In his same statement in the peristyle of the Parliament, Mr. Katrougalos added:

“Political responsibility lies exclusively with the Prime Minister who, from the beginning of his administration, chose to subject the EYP to his own supervision by changing the legislative framework for its Governor to appoint his own person who did not have the formal qualifications, subsequently creating a watertight mechanism within the EYP with a special account with its own VAT number to act as an EYP within the EYP, changing the way of recruitment in it, changing the legal framework according to which the independent authority responsible for monitoring was obliged to inform that it is monitoring.

From the information that is public, it is clear that whoever monitored and infected the phone of the journalist Mr. Koukakis, for whom the EYP had requested that he be monitored based on the legal procedure and then stop when the latter complained to the Anti-Corruption Commission, is the same person who tried to infect Mr. Androulakis’s phone as well since the link was common in both cases”.

SYRIZA, through its MP, declares that: “From our side, we will not let this great issue for the Republic pass like this. We have already submitted an amendment which restores and strengthens the powers of the National Assembly and we will obviously continue in every way from our Constitution and the regulation of the Parliament to shed a lot of light on a case concerning the quality of Democracy”

PASOK: Who is involved in the use of the trapping software

In the meantime, Harilaou Trikoupi launches an attack on the government and the government representative G. Economou with her announcement.

“The Government, after it first took almost two days to overcome its embarrassment in the face of the extremely serious finding by the special service of the European Parliament that among more than two hundred MEPs, the only one whose mobile phone was intercepted was Nikos Androulakis, is already systematically trying to downgrade the case and disorient public opinion” says the PASOK announcement, adding:

“The Government Spokesperson on duty lied that dozens of other MEPs have fallen victim to the Pegasus and Predator software. Since the President of PASOK-Movement for Change did not submit speculation but evidence, we call on Mr. Economou to make public the names of the other MEPs from Hungary, Spain, etc. which is invoked”.

In the same context, it is pointed out that: “Today at the Committee on Institutions and Transparency, the case of Nikos Androulakis has just been opened. Following the initiative of the PASOK-Movement for Change deputies, the government and the relevant agencies revealed what they had been hiding for so many months about the journalist Thanasis Koukakis” .

Finally, PASOK calls on “the government and the judiciary to investigate which persons and which companies are involved in the use of the Predator trapping and tracking software in Greece.
The revelation of the truth is a matter of democracy and PASOK-Movement for Change will not make discounts”.