An unexpected, at least in terms of time, development has come to reopen the file on the Novartis case, which in the recent past has caused fierce political confrontations, but also long judicial investigations, centered on allegations, which have not been confirmed, of donations from the pharmaceutical giant to influencers and prominent political figures.
The decision of the Economic Prosecutor’s Office to remove all protection from two hitherto protected witnesses who had denounced politicians, including former prime ministers (Antonis Samaras, Panagiotis Pikrammeno), for donations from Novartis is already signaling judicial as well as political developments.
The court actions
With this decision, the politicians who were incriminated by the two protected witnesses can now take legal action against them and request their criminal conviction, while all the lawsuits and lawsuits that have already been filed – which were currently on judicial suspension – will be activated directly.
Information from judicial sources already informs “To Vima” that lawsuits and lawsuits that have been filed against the two hitherto protected witnesses are immediately activated by the prosecution authorities, while from now on the codes “Aikaterini Kelesi” and “Maximos Sarafis” which covered the real ones protected witness identities will henceforth cease to be valid.
The real identity of both is recorded in the prosecution document for the removal of their protection and they are Novartis executives. Especially it is about him Filistora Destebasidis and Maria Marangeli, who had been secretary to the company’s once powerful man Konstantinos Frouzis.
The decision of the Economic Prosecutor’s Office to lift the protection for the two Novartis witnesses was taken, according to information, following a recommendation of the assistant prosecutor Eleni Papadopoulou, which was accepted by the financial prosecutor Panagiota Fakou.
It should be noted here that the protected witnesses who had denounced politicians (ten in total) were initially three, but one of them declassified himself, therefore he was not in a protected status.
In view of developments
After the release of the criminal charges against the previously protected witnesses, the judicial developments are expected to be short, as these two witnesses will be accused of defamation and false testimony, with the politicians who were slandered by their statements suing, as what they said to their weight was not confirmed by any other means of evidence. The consequence of this was the files on former prime ministers Ant. Samaras, P. Pikrammeno, the governor of the Bank of Greece Giannis Stournarasthe former deputy prime minister Evangelo Venizelos and former ministers Adonis Georgiadis and Andreas Loverdos, but also for others, to be filed by the competent Prosecutor’s Office.
But the most important thing that is estimated to be signaled by the removal of the protection of the two Novartis witnesses, apart from the criminal consequences for the witnesses themselves, who are no longer protected, is the fact that through the lawsuits and lawsuits against them judicially, but mainly politically, the Novartis chapter will be reopened.
And this, as all estimates point to the fact that in the trials of the two witnesses as defendants, their political prosecutors will claim, as is natural and next, to reveal where they found the evidence with which they defiled and incriminated them.
The legal process, estimated for some lawsuits and lawsuits to begin early next year (early 2025), will once again bring to the fore the political processes through which the impeachment of the ten politicians was conceived, processes that culminated in 2017- 2018 under the SYRIZA-ANEL government, causing a storm of reactions and fierce political conflicts.
Moreover, during the trial of the lawsuits and lawsuits against the two witnesses, no one can prejudge what may be revealed and what may emerge, while the promotion of this story will cause, in addition to judicial consequences, obviously also political consequences for persons found then to the hard core of the relevant decisions for the management of Novartis, as the whole matter will come back to the news with what this may entail for the political action of some at the time, but also for today.
On the other hand, this important development, as the former Prime Minister Antonis Samaras himself characterized it in his statement referring to the decision of the Economic Prosecutor’s Office, reinstates his timeless claim that was expressed with the phrase “until the end”, a phrase which he repeated even after the decision to lift the protection of Novartis witnesses.
It is also estimated that the decision of the financial prosecutors, which apparently paves the way for a full acquittal of the former prime minister as well as of the other politicians who were then slandered and blamed by the protected, may contribute, under certain conditions, to the easing of the tense atmosphere prevailing in relations of the former prime minister with Megaros Maximos, relations that have been going through a crisis recently and are being severely tested.
The removal and the new law
It is also important how the Prosecutor’s Office managed to remove the protection of Novartis witnesses after so many years and while this had been sought many times by the politicians, whose name had been involved in the donations of the pharmaceutical giant.
As the government representative said in his statement Pavlos Marinakisthe possibility was given to prosecutors to review the whole matter by a law passed by the current minister of justice George Floridis.
That law gave economic prosecutors the power to reevaluate the politicians’ requests and ultimately lift the protections of the two witnesses, opening a new chapter in the Novartis case, whose investigation focused in the critical first years on unsubstantiated allegations of the politicians and the real scandal with the illegal practices of the pharmaceutical giant was lost and any possibility to compensate our country, as was done in the USA, or to punish sworn doctors…
#Novartis #case
