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This is our weekly round-up from Greece.
 

A new study found that 97.7% of all Covid-19 intubated patients hospitalized outside ICUs died. As a response, the government cut access to EODY data for scientist Theodore Lytras who conducted the research.


There was huge outrage this week as Justice cleared all the defendants in the Siemens bribery scandal - one of the biggest ever scandals in the country. The top prosecutor ordered an investigation into the proceedings. 


New revelations as to the wiretapping scandal tighten the grip around the government. However, for mainstream media, there is no scandal anymore. 

 


 


 

Study finds nearly all intubated patients outside ICUs died - Professor attacked

 

At this period of its history, Greece is a country where you have to prove what should have been self-evident. 

 

Thus, an assistant professor of Public Health at the European University of Cyprus, epidemiologist Theodore Lytras published a study this week, which showed that 97.7% of COVID-19 patients who were not hospitalized in an ICU bed died.

 

The study examined the period September 2021 to April 2022 and found that mortality increased by 21% compared to the previous study by Professors Sotiris Tsiodras/Thodoros Lytras conducted from the start of the pandemic until May 2021.

 

The new study only verifies the findings of the initial study by examining double the number of intubated patients (14,011 vs 6,282). 

 

Among others, the study found that if somebody is heavily ill despite being vaccinated, it is the quality of healthcare that defines if he/she will live or die.  

 

Furthermore, mortality increased by 21% since 1 September as compared to the previous period. Mortality is 64% higher for those hospitalized in the countryside as compared to Athens. Professor Lytras noted that in the previous study, this difference was 36%.  

 

Reportedly today Mr. Lytras no longer has access to official data from the National Public Health Organisation EODY. According to reports, the government cut Professor Lytras access after he handed in -as expected- this second part of his research to the Ministry of Health, in July.  

 

Of course, Health Minister Plevris would not undertake any responsibility. Instead, he chose to blame the intubated patients who died, because “they were mostly unvaccinated.”

 

Greece’s PM has famously tried to impose unscientific unreality in the past by famously saying: “Are there patients today intubated outside ICUs? Yes, there are. Are they in a bed with normal care? They are. Do we have any indication that there is excess mortality for those patients in relation to those in ICUs? No, I don’t have such an indication. Do you? Well, bring it!” 

 

Main opposition SYRIZA leader Alexis Tsipras just asked the PM “to at least say he is sorry” to these dead people. 

 

Medical Union OENGE General Secretary Panagiotis Papanikolaou reminded on Twitter that the union had filed a complaint with the Top Court Areios Pagos in April 2021, its main topic being hospitalization of heavily ill patients outside ICUs, in common wards. “What happened to this complaint is still unknown until today, eighteen months later”, the doctor notes. 

 

It should be reminded that the number of ICUs in Greece is extremely low. Before the pandemic, as doctor Papanikolaou noted, the country had just 565 ICUs, while there should have been 2,000 according to international standards. All of the medical community would agree with that. During the pandemic, only an extra 150 ICUs were added, the infrastructure for them being there already but lacking medical personnel to operate them. 

 

That was all. 

 

“Hospitalising an intubated patient outside an ICU is like a shot in the head,” as Papageorgiou Hospital Intensive Care Specialist Vasilis Tsapas put it.   

 


 

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Siemens Scandal: Justice was not done 

 

It has been one of the biggest scandals that rocked Greece: the Siemens scandal. This week, after a long judicial procedure, the Appeals Court cleared all defendants in the Siemens bribery scandal. For most of them, the court decided the penal prosecution should end for acts committed until 2002 due to the statute of limitations. According to the presiding judge, besides the statute of limitations, there was not sufficient evidence or there was doubt as to the illegal wealth increase of the then State Telecommunications Company OTE executives.  

 

(The court decision with more details here). 

 

The Siemens scandal broke out at a global level when it was revealed in Germany that the company had spent 1.3 billion euros in dubious payments (bribes) to earn contracts in various countries between 1999 and 2006. 

 

In Greece, the scandal broke out in February 2008. It was concerning possible bribes given to politicians of the then two major parties, PASOK and ND, and state companies executives in exchange for securing contracts. The then ND government, under Kostas Karamanlis, promised to shed light on the case.  

 

The bribes only for Greece were estimated at 130 million German marks. 

 

Expensive contracts with state companies came under scrutiny, mainly regarding the digitalization of Telecommunications Company OTE phone centers (jointly with Intracom), the out-of-order C4I system, part of the Proastiakos train, train companies OSE and ISAP infrastructure, army communications system Hermes, public hospitals supplies.    

 

The loss for the Greek state is huge, while a scandalous compromise was reached in 2013, according to which the company agreed to pay as compensation only 13 million euros in sponsorships and infrastructure for the hospitals! The company was allowed to “get clean” this way. The current PM had stated in 2016 ïf you don’t like this compromise, go ahead and change it.”

 

It is worth noting that the compromise was reached before the trial had started. Because the trial started only in 2017 - nine years after the scandal broke out. 

 

Some important aspects: 

 

Some key defendants had managed to flee abroad. The ex-Siemens Hellas director Michalis Christoforakos, of Greek-German citizenship, fled to Europe while he had been called to testify to the magistrate. Minister of Foreign Affairs was then Dora Bakoyannis, sister of the current PM Mitsotakis and mother of Athens mayor Bakoyannis. The international warrants would be issued afterward and would be executed finally in Germany where Christoforakos was sentenced for… disloyalty to Siemens and fined 350,000. The German authorities denied extraditing him to Greece.   

 

Nine days later than Christoforakos, top Siemens Hellas executive till 2001 Christos Karavelas fled abroad. He was until 1998 responsible for bribing Greek state employees. No one knows where he is even today.

 

Siemens Hellas president Folker Jung also fled to Germany, violating a judicial prohibition to exit the country.   

 

The Mitsotakis family has been associated in many ways with the Siemens scandal, although there is no evidence connecting them with the bribes. They had close relations with Christoforakos. 

 

In 2008, PM Mitsotakis had accepted telecommunications infrastructure of 137,000 euros value from Siemens, for free. He later paid the amount when witnesses testified on gifts to the prosecutors. Similar “gifts” had been given to the whole Mitsotakis family, according to the invoices presented in court and a key-witness testimony.   

 

The court evidence also showed that Mitsotakis had a close relationship with Christoforakos, with the latter contacting (either personally or through telephone) the Mitsotakis family 356 times. That is 60% of similar contacts Christoforakos had with all politicians. 

 

And there was a strange coincidence: in 2002 the PM’s wife Mareva Grabowski and Christoforakos had bought two real estate items on Tinos island, only some weeks apart, from the same seller, while the contracts had been issued by the same company in Athens. The plots were next to each other.   

 

While Greece has been rocked by more than a decade of crises and the citizens’ life quality has significantly deteriorated, it should not come as a surprise that the Greeks were enraged with the court’s decision (see here some reactions on Twitter). 

 

After this provocative decision, the Top Areios Pagos Prosecutor ordered an investigation as to whether some of those involved in the judicial proceedings contributed to the annulment of criminal acts due to statute of limitations by themselves conducting criminal acts or omissions. 



 

Spyware scandal: The grip around the government is closing

 

More revealing information as to the spyware scandal came to light this week, thanks to a report by journalist and SYRIZA MEP Stelios Kouloglou. 

 

Kouloglou documented citing electronic communications evidence that the two key-people in the spyware scandal, businessmen Yannis Lavranos and Felix Bitzios, both directly or indirectly connected with the PM’s general secretary and nephew who resigned, Grigoris Dimitriadis, are those behind KRIKEL company. In the last three years, KRIKEL company has achieved -“in a scandalous way” the report noted- “secret” multi-million contracts with the Greek state. 

 

Moreover, the report documented that, while testifying in the parliamentary investigative committee on 22 September, KRIKEL manager Stamatis Trimbalis employed false arguments in an effort to disorient the MPs as to Lavranos' and Bitzios's role in KRIKEL. 

 

ND MPs in the Committee had turned down the opposition’s request for Lavranos and Bitzios to be called and testify.     

 

Following the revelations, PEGA Committee’s MEP Sophie in ‘t Veld tweeted:

 

“More evidence found by Stelios Kouloglou on Predatorgate. It seems unavoidable for Bitzios & Lavranos to have to testify before the GR parliamentary inquiry committee. Also interesting bits on the "accidental" deletion of the files on Thanassis Koukakis and Nikos Androulakis.”

 

However, mainstream media in Greece continue to obscure developments on the scandal. An outright example is daily ‘TA NEA.’ Citing a poll as the main topic on its Friday front page, supposedly favorable for the government, the newspaper’s title was: ‘The End of the Wiretapping Scandal - The public opinion is influenced no more by it. ’   

 

This was after Kouloglou’s report and on the day Androulakis was expected in the Committee to testify. 



 

Read

 

UNHCR Special Procedures: Greece: smears & threats against human rights defender Iasonas Apostolopoulos (joint communication)

 

Veteran journalist Ioannis Stevis sued by hospital director for 200,000 euros

 

Campus shooting in Athens: Civilian, police officer injured

 

Konstantinos Plevris, the lawyer of a Golden Dawn MP, gave a Nazi salute inside the courtroom in Greece. His son, Thanos Plevris, who also had far-right affiliations until fairly recently, is the Health minister under the Mitsotakis government. The Athens Barristers Association ordered disciplinary persecution. 

 

Eurostat: Early estimates show that for the EU Member States with available data, 5 registered an increase in the at-risk-of-poverty rate in the 2019-2021 period, of which four were statistically significant: Greece, Croatia, Latvia, and the Netherlands.

 

European ships bolster Russian fossil fuel trade despite looming EU sanctions

 

EU Commission chief cancels dinner with Greek PM: Rule of law issues in Greece and the recent spyware and wire-tapping Predator scandal involving the government, have not gone unnoticed by the European Commission even if it has so far kept quiet on such issues, sources at the European Parliament told EURACTIV

 

More antiquities unearthed during works for Thessaloniki metro

 

Klaus Regling: Return to primary surpluses

 

Mandatory Rapid Test for Unvaccinated Workers in Greece

 

Greece makes anti-skid chains obligatory from October to April


 

 

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