Journalist 'dumbfounded' at legal move just weeks after he was acquitted for publishing list of alleged tax evaders
A Greek journalist who published the names of more than 2,000 wealthy Greeks with Swiss bank accounts faces a retrial, barely two weeks after he was acquitted of breaking data privacy laws.
Kostas Vaxevanis was arrested, tried and found not guilty within days of the list's publication. But court officials said on Friday the verdict "lacked credibility". Vaxevanis told the Guardian he was "dumbfounded" at the news, and attributed the move to concerted efforts on the part of the judiciary to silence the press.
"It's absolutely unprecedented. The court has yet to even write up its decision finding me innocent and the prosecutor's office is already ordering a retrial," he said. "They not only acted illegally, resorting to violence when I was arrested last month, they not only ridiculed Greece internationally trying to censor the press, when I am found innocent they want to overturn the judgment, doing whatever they can to get the result that they want."
Vaxevanis, whose case has aroused international uproar over media censorship in the crisis-hit country, said he wanted the new trial to take place as soon as possible. Announcing that the acquittal on 1 November was erroneous, the Athens public prosecutor's office said the journalist should be retried by a higher misdemeanour court on the same charges.
"The prosecutor believes that the decision in favour of the journalist is legally wrong," a court official told Reuters.
Three people named on the list have also requested an appeal on the verdict, the official added. If found guilty, Vaxevanis could be jailed for up to two years or face a fine.
"No trial date has been set, as far as I know, but if I have to be tried again I want the hearing to happen straight away," he said.
"They clearly want to terrorise me, and in doing so shut up the press so, and I don't want to be their hostage. I want to get this over with as soon as possible."
Greeks were outraged by the initial decision to prosecute the reporter who published the so-called "Lagarde List" in his bi-monthly magazine Hoc Doc. In a nation hit by relentless rounds of austerity, many had publicly praised the editor for revealing the names of the 2,059 Greeks who had opened accounts at the Geneva branch of HSBC amid widespread speculation that the account holders were also suspected tax evaders. Although successive governments had been in possession of the list – first given to Greek authorities by the IMF chief, Christine Lagarde, who was then French finance minister – it had never been acted on with one former finance minister, George Papaconstantinou, going so far as to had "lost" the catalogue of names.
"Instead of chasing tax evaders they are chasing me," said Vaxevanis, who had described his original trial as "targeted and vengeful". The journalist, who has become an unwitting international media star, has vowed to continue unveiling the truth in a country he insists is governed by a "corrupt clique".
"There's a huge problem in Greece, a problem of democracy and essence," he told the Guardian recently. "The country is governed by a poisonous combination of politicians, businessmen and journalists who cover one another's backs. Every day laws are changed, or new laws are voted in, to legitimise illegal deeds. Had it not been for the foreign media taking such an interest in my own story, it would have been buried."
Greece has so far failed to convict any big names of tax evasion, fuelling popular disenchantment with a political class that has promised but failed to force the wealthy to share some of the pain of the debt crisis that erupted in Athens three years ago.
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