Complaint filed by EYP official over Predator espionage: Maximos refuses to answer
A senior active official at the National Intelligence Service has filed a complaint about espionage via Predator. The government spokesperson declined to say whether the prime minister was informed.
Papadopoulos's complaint: Questions about EYP that the government leaves unanswered
A senior active official at the National Intelligence Service has filed a complaint about espionage using Predator software — and Maximos decided not to answer the central question that arises. According to In.gr, government spokesperson Pavlos Marinakis declined to clarify whether Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, in his capacity as political head of EYP, sought information about the complaint and the allegations contained therein.
Marinakis was asked twice during a briefing with political journalists. Both times he did not provide a clear answer. Instead, he shifted the discussion to the judiciary, arguing that it is not the government's role to deal with complaints and legal cases. At the same time, he spoke of a "minority in the press of telepundits", suggesting that those who wish to engage with legal matters should sit examinations for the judicial service.
However, the question was not about criminal liability. It concerned whether the prime minister sought to find out what happened in the service of which he is political head. Specifically: whether there was a breach of EYP security, whether classified information was stolen, where it ended up, whether operations or informants were compromised, and whether other officials faced similar problems.
The complainant is not an external critic
Giannis Papadopoulos, who filed the complaint, does not belong to the opposition or the journalistic sphere. He is a senior active official at EYP and, according to reports, works in the counter-espionage sector. In his complaint he seeks investigation into, among other things, the felony of espionage. It is directed against four people already convicted at first instance in the Predator case — Dilyan, Chamoum, Bitzios and Lavranou — but also against "any other person responsible".
In this way, the complaint challenges the notion that the case has answered all critical questions. At the same time, it brings the wiretapping scandal back into the spotlight in an official manner: the complainant himself is within the service whose mission is to protect national security.
Two logical conclusions, neither comfortable
As In.gr points out, the absence of a clear answer gives rise to two scenarios. Either the prime minister has already been informed — in which case it is reasonable to ask whether the government believes there is a national security issue — or he has not been informed, in which case the question becomes even more difficult: why did the political head of EYP not seek information when an active official of the service turned to the judiciary to report espionage?
There was also a third option for Maximos: to invoke secrecy — to say, that is, that the prime minister knows but the matter cannot be discussed publicly for reasons of national security. Something similar has been done in the past by others associated with Maximos since the scandal broke. This option was not chosen.
The government line faces difficulties
Following the publication of the single-judge misdemeanour court's decision on the four first-instance convictions, the government has attempted to treat the Predator case as judicial — and therefore as politically exhausted. The Papadopoulos complaint makes this line difficult to maintain.
The case returns to where Maximos would have preferred it to have moved away from: political responsibility. The prime minister has repeatedly stated that he is the one who will "pick up the phone at 3 in the morning" when necessary. The question that remains unanswered is whether he picked it up to find out what happened at EYP — and if so, what he learned. The reference to the judiciary by the government spokesperson, as In.gr notes, is not an answer to these questions.
Source: In.gr