SYRIZA on Novartis case: “Tombstone to the important institution of witness protection” –

“A tombstone to the important institution of witness protection“, characterizes SYRIZA the decision of the financial prosecutor to remove the protection of the two key witnesses of the Novartis case.

SYRIZA notes that the institution is applied everywhere in Europe, and not only, because it promotes the administration of justice, especially in cases of public interest.

The announcement of SYRIZA

“Tombstone to the important institution of witness protection, which is applied everywhere in Europe, and not only, because it promotes the administration of justice, especially in cases of public interest.

After all, it was the institution of protected witnesses, or public interest witnesses, that contributed to the revelation of the international Novartis scandal.

The celebrations of the ND and the government representative distract from the big picture:

Thanks to the testimony of protected witnesses (and witnesses who cooperated with the US justice system) Novartis was forced to settle out of court with the US government in the amount of 345 million dollars. Of these, 310 million related to Novartis’ practices in Greece, but the Greek government never turned against the multinational.

Let us recall that the protected witnesses of the Novartis case were awarded in the European Parliament in 2020, with the annual prize for “Journalists, public interest witnesses and defenders of the right to information”, awarded in honor of the murdered Maltese journalist, Daphne Caruana Galizia.

Two more comments:

• The way for today’s development was of course opened by the ND government itself with this year’s amendment of article 218 of the Code of Civil Procedure on the status of witness protection, as P. Marinakis reminded in his statement today.
• In other words, the government created the framework and the environment for the gravestone decision to be made in the witness protection regime.”