Former chief-of-staff of PM’s office appears before Parliament com’t to answer questions over wire-tapping, hacking furor

The prime minister’s former chief of staff appeared at a much-anticipated closed-door session of a Parliamentary committee of inquiry on Monday to answer questions over a wiretapping and mobile phone hacking furor that has dominated much of the political limelight over the past two months.

Grigoris Dimitriadis, along with the then head of Greece’s national intelligence service (EYP), resigned in the wake of a revelation that the spy agency had requested and received approval by a high-ranking prosecutor to legally eavesdrop on the mobile phones of current KINAL-PASOK president Nikos Androulakis and a local investigative journalist. Androulakis’ phone was wiretapped during a period when he vied for the helm of the opposition party, but the warrant was invalidated and the operation stopped when he was elected as the party leader, or so the government has maintained. Androulakis remains a serving deputy in the European Parliament.

In a brief appearance, roughly 20 minutes, Dimitriadis reportedly did not cite a confidentiality clause, as he did the last time he appeared before the committee of institutions and transparency, but he did not add any substantive information on whether or not Greece’s intelligence service used the notorious Predator surveillance software.

He merely said he had no dealings or business meetings with businessmen Yannis Lavranos and Felix Bitzios, who have been repeatedly cited in media reports as representatives of the opaque business grouping peddling the software in the Greek market, sources said.

The former top government cadre said he only knew Lavranos in a social setting but had no business meetings with him, or, as some press reports have claimed, held meetings with him on Cyprus. Along those lines, he also denied any relationship with the firms Krikel and Intellexa (billed as the creators and agents of the software), but said the latter became active in Greece during the previous SYRIZA government’s tenure (2015-19), when a contract was signed between the Greek state and the companies.

Dimitriadis, a close nephew of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, also said he does not know an Israeli businessman linked with the predator software, or any other parties dealing with such surveillance and hacking tools. He merely said his cooperation was only with the former head of EYP. Moreover, he again repeated that Mitsotakis was not aware of the legal orders to wiretap Androulakis and the journalist.

Sharp opposition and media criticism has been lobbed against the conservative government and Mitsotakis personally over the wiretapping.

At the same time, a handful of media outlets have charged that the malicious software was used to hack the mobile phones of dozens of people, including current ministers, some of their spouses, business people and journalists. The explosive allegations, however, have been mostly based on anonymous sources so far.

According to the same reports on Monday, deputies of main opposition SYRIZA party, who serve as members of the committee, pressed Dimitriadis on how he could be so certain that malicious surveillance software has not been purchased and used by state services when he claims that “he had not knowledge of anything or anyone”.

A majority of members of the committee (where the ruling party holds a majority) also voted to send written questions to Lavranos, Bitzios and Israeli intelligence expert and digital entrepreneur Tal Dilian – who has not been located or subpoenaed – a process that SYRIZA deputies sharply criticized.