In the summer of 2022, the current head of socialist party Pasok, Nikos Androulakis – then an MEP – was informed by the EU Parliament’s IT experts that he had received a malicious text message from an unknown sender, containing spy software.
This Predator spyware, which is marketed by the Athens-based Israeli company Intellexa, can get access to a device’s messages, camera, and microphone – turning a person’s phone against them.
Things escalated after Androulakis also discovered that he had been tracked for “national security reasons” by Greece’s National Intelligence Service (EYP).
Just a month after taking office in the summer of 2019, PM Kyriakos Mitsotakis had placed EYP directly under his supervision.
His conservative government was suddenly at the heart of the crisis. The head of EYP, Panagiotis Kontoleon, resigned, as did the prime minister’s top aide and nephew, Grigoris Dimitriadis, who was the liaison between EYP and the PM’s office.
Predator had been used in attempts to entrap at least 87 people, according to the Hellenic Data Protection Authority. Twenty seven of those put under surveillance were simultaneously monitored by EYP, including serving ministers and senior military officers.
Despite criticism that the common targets by EYP and Predator implied a common strategy of surveillance, the government insisted that this was a coincidence and that no law enforcement agency had ever used Predator, the use of which was illegal in Greece at that time. A new law passed in 2022 has since legalised state security use of surveillance software under strict conditions.
But the government did not answer why the secret services had spied on the Chief of National Defence General Staff, Lieutenant General Konstantinos Floros, and Kostis Hatzidakis, then cabinet member and today vice president of the government.