Greece’s parliamentary scrutiny of the Predator spyware affair is poised to intensify, with nearly the entire opposition moving to compel two central figures to appear before the Institutions and Transparency Committee for questioning.
The two are Grigoris Dimitriadis, the former secretary-general of the prime minister’s office and a nephew of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, and Tal Dilian, the convicted Israeli businessman who owns the surveillance software at the heart of the case. Dimitriadis resigned in 2022 as the spyware scandal engulfed the government, and has said in a recent interview that he stepped down to protect the government, the intelligence service, and the country. According to all indications, the opposition’s request is gathering the two-fifths of the committee’s total membership required for the proposal to pass.
To date, formal requests have been submitted by PASOK, the Communist Party (KKE), SYRIZA and Elliniki Lysi. According to reports, the Niki party and Plefsi Eleftherias intend to file corresponding requests. Once the requests are submitted, summoning the two men becomes mandatory under the rules of the Greek parliament, specifically articles 41A and 43A.
PASOK renewed its request citing reporting by To Vima. In its announcement, the party said that following the report in Sunday’s Edition of To Vima, summoning Dilian and Dimitriadis before the committee was necessary.
Dilian’s claims about Predator and the intelligence service
SYRIZA, in its own announcement, pointed to a recent statement by Dilian, founder of Intellexa, the company that supplies the software. The party said Dilian directly reiterated that the software is provided only to state agencies. According to the conviced founder of the spyware company, there is a written cooperation agreement between Intellexa, which manufactures and distributes the software, and Greece’s National Intelligence Service (EYP), as a counterparty, dating back to 2020.
SYRIZA also said Dilian referred to dozens of emails with state employees, chiefly EYP officials, concerning technical and administrative matters relating to the operation of Predator, as well as daily corrections to the system.
Beyond Dimitriadis and Dilian, SYRIZA is seeking to summon Panagiotis Kontoleon, the former head of EYP, and Merom Harpaz, described as the general director and technical director of the group of Israelis who brought the illegal Predator software to Greece, as stated in the relevant ruling of the Athens Single Member Misdemeanors Court.
What the governing majority will do
A major question is how the governing New Democracy party will respond, and whether it will attempt a maneuver to avoid what is an awkward development for the government. The majority could choose to delay summoning the witnesses, since the two-fifths provision can be invoked only once a month.
Given that the most recent such procedure took place at the end of the previous month, the majority could push the process back, potentially until the middle of July.Either way, the committee members have a right to be informed, and the majority cannot block them from achieving that. It can only delay.
Finally, committee sessions concerning EYP are always held behind closed doors. In the past, the Supreme Court prosecutor declined to appear and submitted a written memorandum instead, a move that ran counter to parliamentary rules.
