Kostas Vaxevanis, who published names of 2,059 suspected tax dodgers, will go on trial for the second time in October
The retrial of a Greek newspaper editor accused of violating privacy laws when he revealed the names of suspected tax evaders with accounts in Switzerland has been postponed until October.
Kostas Vaxevanis, who revealed the identities of 2,059 wealthy Greeks on the so-called Lagarde list, was told on Monday morning that the hearing had been deferred.
"I sat in the dock with the three-member panel of judges going in and out of the room for more than two hours before it was decided that the trial should be postponed," he told the Guardian.
In a case that has highlighted the fragility of press freedom in crisis-hit Greece, Vaxevanis was ordered to stand trial for a second time in less than a year by the public prosecutor's office in Athens. The verdict of a lower-level court acquitting him of the charge last November was deemed to be flawed.
The postponement now means the judges will be able to take into account the findings of a special parliamentary committee set up to investigate official handling of the Lagarde list.
Named after the then French finance minister, Christine Lagarde, the list detailed the identities of individuals with holdings in the Geneva branch of the HSBC bank.
Lagarde, who currently heads the International Monetary Fund, gave the data to her then Greek counterpart George Papaconstantinou in a bid to expedite Greece's crackdown on tax evasion – widely seen as the root cause of debt-stricken country's financial woes.
The former finance minister, universally identified as the architect of the country's first EU-IMF sponsored bailout, has since been accused of tampering with the list to protect three of his relatives on it.
Last week, on the basis of the committee's findings, the 300-seat Greek parliament voted to step up charges against him to include the accusation of criminal breach of faith.
The ex-politician has vehemently denied any wrongdoing saying he is being scapegoated by a political elite under pressure to be seen to be meting out justice to officials widely blamed for the punishing austerity measures that have followed Greece's dramatic economic collapse.
The parliamentary probe, which could see Papacontantinou being tried before a special court, is set to deliver a final verdict at the end of June.
"The findings of the committee are essential to proving whether I broke the law," said Vaxevanis. "Already it has been proved that the list was an official document that I had every right to publish."
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