The move follows the ruling of the Athens single-judge misdemeanour court and the subsequent examination of the court’s lengthy decision by the prosecutor’s office of first instance, which concluded that further investigation is needed into several aspects of the case relating to the functioning of the rule of law.
Under the prosecutorial plan, the central and most serious dimension of the case, concerning possible espionage and the operation of Predator, will return to the Supreme Court prosecutor’s office, which had already handled the initial stage of the preliminary investigation before the court ruling. It will now decide which senior prosecutor will take over the continuation of the inquiry.
The court’s decision did not stop at the conviction of the four defendants, who were found guilty and given prison sentences suspended pending appeal. It also pointed to the need to investigate further aspects of the case, placing under scrutiny not only those already convicted but also individuals who had not previously come under criminal investigation.
In effect, the court opened four parallel lines of inquiry, with the focus on the possible crime of espionage, given that Predator was capable of remotely accessing mobile phones, extracting data and monitoring senior state officials with access to classified information, including military leaders, the ministers of defence and citizen protection, and others holding sensitive institutional positions. Investigators are examining whether material obtained through surveillance was trafficked, used or ended up in the hands of third parties, which could constitute the offence of espionage.
At the same time, the court also called for new witnesses to be summoned, since a number of Predator targets who allegedly had indications or evidence of surveillance had not so far been asked to testify. According to current estimates, new complaints and testimony may follow from people who had not previously taken legal action, potentially widening the investigation further.
A second strand of the case concerns lower-level criminal offences, with the prosecutor’s office of first instance taking over the investigation into alleged perjury. These inquiries mainly concern testimony given in parliament and during the judicial process, where, according to complaints, witnesses were coached, allegedly with the involvement of political figures, including government MPs.
Particular importance is attached to the case of Stamatis Trimbalis, the then legal representative of the company Krikel, who allegedly admitted in court that he had acted as a front man for businessman Yannis Lavranos. Lavranos has also been convicted at first instance and is under investigation for alleged moral instigation of perjury.
The authorities are also examining possible perjury linked to the holder of the prepaid card from which the infected message was allegedly sent to PASOK leader Nikos Androulakis. They are also looking into the trail of transactions uncovered by the investigation, as well as the identity of a mobile phone shop employee and his alleged connection to government services.
Responsibility for coordinating the new investigations has been assigned to prosecutor Sotiris Bougioukos, who, after studying the ruling, moved to separate the case file according to the gravity of the alleged offences. Under this plan, the most serious elements, namely espionage, the possible involvement of the National Intelligence Service and the connection to Predator, remain with the Supreme Court prosecutor’s office, while the rest will be examined at lower prosecutorial levels.
The case has also drawn attention to public interventions by Israeli businessman Tal Dilian, one of the four convicted men and the owner of the company that sold the illegal software, who has claimed that his activities concerned only state agencies, casting doubt on the narrative that this was purely private action without state involvement. In public statements, he has also warned that any attempt to cover up the case could trigger a political crisis comparable to Watergate in the United States.
What emerges overall is a broad and still open judicial investigation, proceeding on multiple levels and remaining active both at the Supreme Court and at first-instance level. New summonses, prosecutions and revelations remain possible, while concerns are growing over the risk that some parts of the case could be lost to statutory limitation.
Zacharias Kesses, lawyer for journalist Thanasis Koukakis, one of the surveillance targets, criticised the decision of the prosecutor’s office of first instance to forward part of the case file to the Supreme Court rather than handling the ‘high-risk’ misdemeanours itself, arguing that the case is already at risk of becoming time-barred. He warned that delays could allow serious acts to go unpunished and stressed that ‘the prestige of justice must be protected’, describing as unacceptable the possibility that cases could be lost because of prosecutorial delay.
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