The website parapolitika.gr has released excerpts of what it claims is the recorded conversation in which the MP Pavlos Chaikalis was offered a bribe to vote in favour of Stavros Dimas for the position of President of the Republic.
(UPD: Parapolitika.gr has removed the video but other users have uploaded it to the web.)
The man accused of making the bribery attempt is Giorgos Apostolopoulos. Apostolopoulos is said to have worked for Deutsche Bank and several investment funds as well had advisory roles in both the governments of George Papandreou and Antonis Samaras. He has also reportedly since advised the leader of the Independent Greeks party (to which Chaikalis belongs), Panos Kammenos before taking up a position with Piraeus Bank.
In the video released by parapolitika, Apostolopoulos apparently refers to a sum of 600-700 thousand euros. He says, “I will bring it and deposit it at your feet.”
“Clear and dry I’m telling because otherwise it’ll go to hell. I literally have the money now… It is the easiest thing, Six – seven hundred now. I will check them one by one [meaning the banknotes] in case they are marked from a criminal action and I will give it to you immediately.” (Apostolopoulos implies that there is a danger that the banknotes have been marked by police as they were from a ransom payment or some other criminal activity).
Later Apostolopoulos explains how the money will be laundered through a bank account in Austria and will later be converted into gold.
“When the fuss dies down in February we will convert it into gold. Bit by bit. Ten – ten, twenty – twenty. Slowly. I am certain that everything will be fine. So you can improve your life a little bit.”
Apostolopoulos also presses for the exchange to happen straight away, “If we don’t do it directly, you don’t vote,” he says. “Tomorrow morning?” Haikalis asks. “Not tomorrow morning, at least a day will be needed. I will bring it to you here for security reasons. I will bring [the money] and place it at your feet,” Apostolopoulos says.
In the conversation the Prime Minister is also implicated. Towards the end of the conversation Haikalis asks, “What is happening with the party you were telling me about?” Apostolopoulos tells Chaikalis “You also have a meeting with Samaras.”
Chaikalis reacts to this with surprise saying nobody from the Samaras's circle had contacted him to which Apostolopoulos responds, “He told me, we will call him, he says. Either we have already called him or we will call him.” Apostolopoulos then tells Haikalis that he will send him a message later in the day to tell him when the meeting with will take place.
Questions about the Video
The video in question adds further wrinkles to what is already a bizarre and explosive case. While the conversation it depicts certainly appears damning, there are also certain questions that must be answered with regards to the recording itself.
For one it is unclear exactly how the recoding was made. It appears highly unlikely that the device capturing the video was also capturing the sound given that it is placed on a table quite a distance from the two men with an unidentified woman in the foreground. At the very least another microphone must be involved.
It should also be noted that at no point in the footage can the mouths of the two men be seen and matched with the words they are supposedly saying. Additionally the audio and video seem to be at the very least out of sync. For example at about the 4.07 mark Apostolopoulos can be seen taking a sip of coffee when he is supposedly speaking.
This in turn raises questions about the role of Lakis Lazopoulos, a popular comedian and political satirist in editing the footage. Haikalis has said that he had first given the recording to Lazopoulos who is a trusted friend in order for him to ‘clean up’ the recording.
Exactly how the footage in question has been edited by Lazopoulos is just one more question that authorities will have to answer as they investigate the case which appears to get murkier by the hour.
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