The full report by the deputy prosecutor Panagiotis Panagiotopoulos, has been released about the attempted bribery allegations made by the MP and actor Pavlos Haikalis. The document was forwarded by Panagiotopoulos to his superior, the Appeals Prosecutor Isidoros Dogiakos.
Haikalis who is a member of the Independent Greeks (ANEL) party, made the allegations together with the leader of the party, Panos Kammenos. Effectively Haikalis alleges that Giorgos Apostolopoulos, a financial consultant with business and political connections, attempted to bribe him with over a million euros in cash and other benefits to vote in favour of the government’s candidate for president of the republic.
Apostolopoulos has denied the charges, arguing that he only met with Haikalis to make a fake offer in order to prove that the MP was untrustworthy.
The prosecutor’s report effectively sides with Apostolopoulos, concluding that the facts of the case do not provide sufficient evidence to back up Haikalis’s accusations. Below are some key points from the report:
The crime Haikalis alleges makes no sense, prosecutors say
According to the prosecutor the timeline of the case is as follows:
On the 6th of December at 20.00, Pavlos Haikalis first appears before prosecutors and testifies that in September 2014 he had been approached by an individual “known to him and the President of ANEL in order to explore the potential for a positive vote in the election of a President of the Republic and that the individual in question had offered him a bribe of over 1,000,000 euros.” Haikalis tells the prosecutor that a meeting had subsequently taken place with the individual on the 2nd of December, 2014 during which a concrete plan was laid out involving the transfer of 700,000 euros in ‘black’ cash with the remainder given over in other ways.
Haikalis then tells prosecutors that on the 6th of December (the same day that he was testifying) a second meeting had taken place in the Plaza hotel at which point it was confirmed that 700,000 euros would be delivered by hand to Haikalis at his home. In turn Haikalis would provide a signed declaration of his intention to depart from ANEL. During the December 6th meeting it was also agreed that the remainder of the bribe would be ‘paid’ through advertising contracts and a restructuring of Haikalis’s mortgage. Haikalis tells prosecutors that the individual was “working on the behalf of his apparent employer who, according to what he said, was serving the interests of the government.”
The prosecutor stresses that during his initial testimony on the 6th of December, Haikalis refused to give prosecutors the name of the individual offering the bribe despite repeated requests to do so. (Haikalis later said that he had not given prosecutors the name at their own recommendation – an assertion that the prosecutor strongly refutes).
On the 12th of December, Haikalis informs the authorities that a meeting has been arranged at Haikalis’s house at 18.00 for the - as yet unnamed - intermediary to deliver the 700,000 euros in cash to Haikalis. The prosecutor says that a sting operation was urgently arranged with police in order for the briber to be caught in the act red-handed and arrested.
However the intermediary never showed up. The report cites testimony from Athanasios Raptis, the police officer in charge of the sting operation who told prosecutors, “at about 18.15 we were informed by the MP Haikalis that the meeting had been cancelled with the person he was due to meet. He informed us that the person he was due to meet was Apostolopoulos Giorgos…”
The prosecutor then writes, “From the above it emerges, undoubtedly, that until the time 18.15 on 12.12.2014, neither the Athens Prosecutor… not the [Attica Police] knew the identity of the person who would visit… P. Haikalis at his home and that the police learnt [the identity] informally at that moment (18.15 on 12.12.2014) and formally at 20.10 when the accuser testified at the general police headquarters… As such it is believed strongly towards certainly that the non-arrival of G. Apostolopoulos to the home of P. Haikalis was not due to a ‘leak’ which could not have been done by anybody.”
The prosecutor goes on to conclude that Apostolopoulos never had any intention of showing up at Haikalis's house as the offer of 700,000 euros was false.
The recording(s)
The report notes that Haikalis, working together with Panos Kammenos, sought to record the 6th of December meeting at the Plaza hotel. This was done with cameras and microphones. Furthermore, two aides of Kammenos discreetly observed the meeting.
However they were not the only ones recording the meeting according to the prosecutor’s report. Apostolopoulos had also bugged the area with an “audio recording device under the table used in the meeting which was discovered by Kammenos and Haikalis after the end of the meeting.” Apostolopoulos is also said to have rigged a camera to a fire detector and placed a couple in a well-chosen vantage point to observe the meeting.
All of the above leads the prosecutor to several key conclusions: for one that they support Apostolopoulos’s version of events - that is, that he was trying to trap Haikalis and prove the latter’s untrustworthiness. This is because, the prosecutor concludes, if Apostolopoulos was really trying to commit a crime as serious as bribing an elected official he would have not have arranged to have hired eye-witnesses and recorded evidence of the fact. Similarly, one looking to make such a bribe, the prosecutor argues, would not arrange to do so carrying 700,000 euros in cash to the recipient’s home.
The prosecutor goes on to note that it was only after Haikalis had discovered the recording device following the December 6th meeting that the MP rushed to submit his own recordings and testimony to the prosecutor, making the attempted bribery allegations.
“Mention must be made of the fact that, coming to us the accuser, P. Haikalis, on 06.12.2014 and at 20.00 stressed the possibility that someone may manage to publish material from which it would indicate [Haikalis's] potential guilt regarding the receipt of money by him as a gift… Haikalis answered, “Knowing subsequently that there was a recording, I hurried to submit the material… and protect myself at the same time from leaks of other material which was in the hands of a third party.”
The prosecutor also concludes that there is no evidence that any ‘banking or business official, political party or government or government official’ was behind Apostolopoulos’s actions. “On the contrary it is probable that the action of G. Apostolopoulos did not have political extensions,” the prosecutor writes, largely accepting Apostolopoulos’s argument that he wanted to, “determine the real motives for [Haikalis's] dealings in politics and the ANEL party as well as determine his moral-political poverty and the level that an active politician could sink at critical political junctures for the country, putting personal gain above all else.”
Finally the prosecutor notes that the recordings made by Haikalis and submitted were illegally obtained, according to the law, and therefore inadmissible. This fact together with the above arguments also led the prosecutor to conclude that there was no justification for a warrant to examine Apostolopoulos’s phone records.
The full report is available here (in Greek)
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