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| English: George Papandreou, Greek politician (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
(As noted in a previous article on this case - Mr. Foucas called Michalis Karchimakis to give evidence in a judicial investigation into the wiretapping issue, which was first uncovered in 2005, after a top-secret document was found at his home. Please note that the PASOK MP is not implicated in the wire-tapping scandal directly, but rather on the sidelines of this huge state investigation. Read more about this in a previous report by clicking here)
There is clear evidence that during the period 2005 - 2007, when Costas Karamanlis was in power, a hush-hush network of people -or a state within a state- was operating on on behalf of the then leader of the opposition PASOK party Mr. George Papandreou. Specifically, Karchimakis, who was one of Papandreou's closest associate, apparently illegally possessed highly classified state documents, that in most cases was information that was generally used to brief the head of the government, or Mr. Costas Karamanlis.
Let us repeat: The PASOK party had access -via Karchimakis- to top-secret information which was only suposed to be viewed by the Greek prime minister.
About six months ago, in an open Athens court, a series of public officials appeared before the prosecuting team investigating the case and gave information about this breaching of state secrets. Mr. Foucas took their depositions, and added them to the evidence which the prosecution has been gathering over the last two years and began probing the case more closely.
(It should be reminded that the 2008 December riots, the Wire-Tapping Scandal against the former PM, and the Pythia Plan -which aimed at assassinating the former prime minister as well as destabilising Greece socially, economically and politically- were all merged into one massive investigation by a Prosecutor of the Hellenic Supreme Court, and the investigation has been ongoing for two years now).
With this fresh evidence at hand, a search warrant was issued to investigate the home and the political office of Mr. Karchimakis, where a confidential document was found. One report on defencenet on Sunday said that officials also found defence documents (but the report did not clarify whether these documents were top-secret or not).
The same report on defencenet added that the decision for the surprise raid -which eventually yeilded the expected results- came after a series of depositions that were given from Greek intelligence officers (EYP) claiming that Karchimakis was behind this leaking of state documents (or the source that linked these documents to the then leader of the Greek opposition party which was George Papandreou!)
Foukas also filed charges against an employee from the Greek intelligence service (EYP), who apparently also testified but was then released on restrictive terms. She is now facing serious charges that resemble that of espionage.
According to her: In late November, early December 2005, Karchimakis asked to meet with various union heads at the Greek intelligence agency. The meeting was held at a cafe in Kolonaki (central Athens). At that meeting, Karchimakis turned to the intelligence oficer (initials) A.P. and said "what is happening? You have not yet brought me any of these beautiful documents."
Karchimakis' property was searched after the EYP agent claimed he had asked for the document in 2006.
In a nutshell: Karchimakis was accused by an officer from Greece’s National Intelligence Service (EYP) of asking for top-secret documents to be given to him in 2006. This is what prompted magistrate Dimitris Foukas to oversee the search at Karchimakis’s house and office.
Karchimakis has dismissed accusations but nonetheless faces charges of breaching the state secrets law and has to appear before the magistrate on November 8.
He claims that he is a victim of a conspiracy that is aimed at discrediting and framing his duties as an MP. The former close friend of George Papandreou also says that highly classified documents (as described above) were never found at his home, and the only evidence gathered by officials concerned some documents from the Ministry of Defence which he purposely kept at his home "for the needs of parliamentary scrutiny, as a shadow defense minister during the period when PASOK was in the opposition."
This of course differs greatly from the indictment which was drawn up against him, and which states that in 2005, and with the help of a intelligence officer, Karchimakis held information in his hands that concerned the country's security and foreign relations, something that we all know is generally dubbed as being highly-classified by all governments.
And if that wasn't enough, prosecutors are keeping close tabs on another suspect, who is a foreigner, and who apparently lived in Greece (or was in and out of the country) during the period 1997-2010 and who is directly or indirectly also involved in this controversial case. According to one witness, this suspect played a key role in organizing the network needed to set up the wire-tapping of Mr. Karamanlis. He apparently lived in Greece and used many aliases. Presently, this mystery man is being sought by authorities, but there are no solid leads since they do not even know his idenity.
Karchimakis was recognized as George Papandreou's "right hand" in the area of "special information" (whatever that may mean). His involvement in this case, which caught him in possession of classified information, in a case which began right after Epikaira magazine published an article that exposed the assassination attempt against Karamanlis, appears to indirectly involve George Papandreou. Speaking about good old George, if all the information in the Greek press is true, then wouldn't it be safe to assume that following Karchimakis, the prosecution will also summon George Papandreou for questioning?
After all this is about leaking state information, or basically spying, and who knows this kind of activity might have also been practised by other members of PASOK, who with the help of government officials, were assigned to key positions in the field of information systems, and worked with a "parallel" manner with potential to harm the Greek State's interests.
The question is, will our judicial system actually dig that deep? It remains to be seen.
Stay Tuned Frappers
Source In Greek only Defencenet
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