Shots fired at Alexis Tsipras and leading ministers of the SYRIZA government, by the former Minister of Justice during the SYRIZA government, Stavros Kontoni, in an interview with “Apogematini tis Kyriaki” .
The former minister speaks of “entangled leadership”, while he claims that there was a sham system, which operated under the auspices of former Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, while he also refers to the plan that was “set up” for the political opponents of SYRIZA – PS in the Novartis case.
Indicative of the tense climate between Kontonis and Tsipras is the report of pr. Minister of Justice in the governing period 2015-2019 where accuses Alexis Tsipras of playing the “innocent pigeon”.
Highlights of Stavros Kontonis’ interview
- How did you perceive the intervention of Mr. Tsipras regarding the handling of the Novartis case?
The latest intervention of the former prime minister is yet another episode (the first was his written statement at the SYRIZA conference) in his attempt, on the one hand, to shake off “situations” that outline aspects of the ’15-’19 government in black, pretending “innocent doves”, on the one hand to undermine the Kasselakis presidency and the course of SYRIZA in view of the European elections. I believe that both of his interventions fell on deaf ears, since in the case of Novartis he confirmed the existence of a parasystem operating under his auspices, while in the case of the Congress his attempt to create a problem for the new leadership had very little results .
The imminent electoral failure of SYRIZA does not need the intervention of the former prime minister to be completed, it comes on its own, from the way he exercised opposition in the period ’19-’23, leading the party to destruction.
- Are there specific persons responsible? I am referring to political officials…
Obviously they exist, but the important thing is that this situation ultimately characterized the way in which governance was exercised. Unfortunately, in this way, serious efforts to restore society and the economy, which were made in the same period, were nullified. Because the SYRIZA government was not only what its “entangled leadership” unacceptably implemented, it was also the achievements of those five years, which ultimately led the country to a safe environment, without memorials and to an institutional modernization, which might of course it was more dynamic and comprehensive than it turned out to be.
- Was the former prime minister blameless?
I think I have already answered. However, I think that if a prime minister is described as “blameless” then this is not a mitigating circumstance, but an aggravating one. The Prime Ministers and those of us who have exercised government power cannot be without responsibility, because in this case we turn into fatal and inept, that is, dangerous and inappropriate, in all respects.
- Why did you get… dark, as we heard you say? Wasn’t there a Novartis scandal?
The Novartis case was and remains a very important case of embezzlement of public money, since hundreds of illegals managed to inflate the pharmaceutical expenditure to unimaginable, unjustified and unprecedented heights for our country, with serious adverse effects on the state budget and insurance funds. Unfortunately, the prosecutor’s investigation that was ordered, following my own initiative, was derailed, following the unjustified resignation of the prosecutor El. Raikou, in identifying responsibilities exclusively of political persons. So when the case file was sent to my office in February 2018 and I saw the names of those “involved”, I found that too many of them might not bear any responsibility, since by law they might not have any participation in the formation of the price of the drugs , much more so in illegal prescribing.
The worst was that, on the one hand, on the same day a close associate of the former prime minister and Minister of State had visited, in an institutionally unacceptable manner, certifying the existence of a para-system and a para-ministery, the Prosecutor’s Office of the Supreme Court for the case in question, on the other hand, the following day the this morning the deputy health minister told reporters that he knows the names of the protected witnesses. Isn’t all this enough? After this the end of the story was probably predetermined and the end result was that those who had to be held accountable for their illegal actions and the damage they caused to the insurance funds went unpunished.
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