Six charged in plot to murder investigative journalist Kostas Vaxevanis – two are alleged to be former secret agents

The decision by the prosecutor to charge six individuals is the latest twist in an ongoing saga that began in 2012 and amounts to vindication for Kostas Vaxevanis, the investigative journalist who in October 2012 published the so-called Lagarde List. 

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Explainer: What is the “Lagarde List”
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The infamous list, named after the then French Finance minister Christine Lagarde, was passed from French to Greek officials in 2010 in order to assist them in cracking down on large-scale tax evasion. The list, that dates from 2007, includes the names of more than 2,000 wealthy Greek politicians, businessmen, shipping families and others who held secret bank accounts in the Geneva branch of HSBC allegedly to avoid paying large amounts in taxes to the Greek state.

However rather than triggering immediate widespread audits, the list was plunged into mystery and intrigue with the computer file of the spreadsheet supposedly being ‘mislaid’. The list was eventually published in 2012 by journalist Kostas Vaxevanis in protest over the government’s failure to act on it. He was subsequently prosecuted on charges of breaching privacy laws, but eventually found not guilty by the court.
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The journalist has long maintained that just such a ring had attempted to kill him over a year ago following attempts to discredit him. Much of the evidence leading to the prosecutions was amassed by Vaxevanis himself and his collaborators. Vaxevanis runs the news website koutipandoras.gr and the investigative news magazine HotDoc.

“The Public Order ministry must take a stance and specifically [the minister] Mr Dendias” Vaxevanis told TPPi, adding, “when the issue reached parliament and he was asked about it by foreign journalists he said, ‘come on that’s hyperbole.”

Despite the intrigue of the case, the reaction of the majority of the media to the story has been notably muted so far. Vaxevanis said that this was not surprising. “In another time with a rudimentarily functioning mass media it would be the top story that somebody tried to murder a journalist. But today we have a complete omertà.”

According to koutipandoras.gr, the story began in May of 2012 when Vaxevanis, via Hot Doc, published an investigative report implicating a number of banks in massive fraud and embezzlement schemes involving networks of offshore companies. On the very day that the story was published, the anonymous Greek blog Fimotro.gr posted on its website what appeared to be a €50,000 receipt made out from the NIS to Kostas Vaxevanis for ‘services’ over a six-month period.

Vaxevanis has always maintained that the receipt was a forgery created with the clear intention of discrediting him and the story about the banks by making it appear that he was on the secret service payroll.

He is not the only journalist whose motivations have been called into question by the Fimotro blog. Around the same period and following a Reuters special report examining the bank of Piraeus and its head Michalis Sallas, Fimotro also published posts insinuating that the journalist who wrote the Piraeus story, Stephen Grey, was operating on behalf of secret agencies with the goal of harming Greek banks. Similarly in October of 2013 following a story by Landon Thomas in the New York Times about the role of the Bank of Greece governor (and former Bank of Piraeus executive), George Provopoulos, in the Proton Bank financial scandal, Fimotro published a story implying that Landon Thomas had ties to the CIA and Turkish secret service (that story appears to have been removed by Fimotro but is available here – link in Greek).

In September (and following an incident in which Vaxevanis claims to have narrowly escaped an ambush at his home), a woman made contact with the journalist via Hot Doc. She told him that she worked with a group of individuals that included National Intelligence Service (NIS) agents (although the operation was not authorized by the service) who had rented an apartment next to the Hot Doc offices and, under orders from the ‘bankers’, had planned to first discredit and then eliminate Kostas Vaxevanis, as well as smear a number of other ‘hostile’ journalists.

The woman claimed to have created the forged receipts depicting Vaxevanis as an NIS employee and that these were then given to friendly journalists to be publicised.

According to koutipandoras.gr, a formal examination of the woman’s handwriting confirmed that she had made the forged receipts and the evidence was sent to the public prosecutor. The woman also agreed to testify against the ring and is said to have entered a witness protection program.

Subsequent police investigations uncovered the identities of six people allegedly in the ring. According to koutipandoras.gr, a further conspiracy by the ring was also uncovered to plant drugs in an attempt to discredit a former Piraeus Bank branch manager in Zakynthos who had testified against the bank to the prosecutor for financial crimes. (The former bank manager is entangled in a legal battle against the bank and has also been charged for embezzlement following the bank’s criminal complaints against her.).

The six accused of plotting to assassinate Vaxevanis are charged with establishing, directing and belonging to a criminal gang, conspiring to murder, drug offences, blackmail, forgery and fraud.