An investigative journalist on Tuesday has described Greece’s wiretapping scandal as an “informal public–private partnership,” offering detailed testimony in court that pointed to close ties between state authorities and the private companies behind the Predator spyware system.
Eliza Triantafyllou, a reporter with the investigative outlet Inside Story, testified during the 27th hearing of the ongoing Predator trial at the Single-Member Misdemeanor Court of Athens. The case centers on the development, deployment, and international export of Predator, an advanced spyware tool linked to the illegal surveillance of politicians, journalists, and other public figures in Greece.
Four business figures stand accused in the case: Yiannis Lavranos, whom prosecutors describe as the central figure behind the security firm Krikel, along with Felix Bitzios, Tal Dilian, and Sara Hamou of Intellexa, the consortium that marketed Predator internationally.
According to Triantafyllou, Predator was formally integrated into Greece’s National Intelligence Service (EYP) by 2021. She testified, however, that the spyware had already been used to target individuals in Greece as early as 2020, when it was operated by Intellexa on behalf of the Greek authorities. She added that the EYP’s Technical Intelligence Center served as a central installation point for the system and as the site where intercepted communications were gathered. Her testimony echoed long-standing investigative reporting indicating direct involvement by the intelligence service in the use of Predator, despite repeated official denials.
Triantafyllou told the court that her reporting on the scandal was based on extensive interviews with employees, collaboration with journalists abroad, and direct contact with individuals who had been targeted using Predator. Many of those individuals, she said, privately admitted they had clicked on malicious links used to infect their phones. “Many acknowledged it off the record, including serving ministers,” she testified.
When asked why these figures refused to speak publicly, Triantafyllou said they feared political repercussions. “The government protected the company, and the company protected the government,” she told the court, adding that those involved were unwilling to provoke conflict or attract scrutiny.
She also alleged that Intellexa benefited from extraordinary government facilitation. Work permits and export licenses were granted in record time, she said, and after the scandal became public, the company was given sufficient time to erase traces of its activities. “All of this happened with the government’s involvement,” she testified.
On the issue of funding, Triantafyllou said it was nearly impossible to trace payments through classified intelligence budgets. However, she stated that independent sources had confirmed a base cost of €7 million for Predator, with an additional €150,000 required for every ten extra surveillance targets. The expenses, she said, were concealed within contracts financed by secret state funds.
Triantafyllou further testified that two of the defendants, Bitzios and Lavranos, had access to the National Intelligence Service. She highlighted Bitzios’s close relationship with Grigoris Dimitriadis, the former secretary general of the Greek prime minister’s office, a figure who has appeared repeatedly in media reporting on the scandal.
Responding to questions about whether intercepted material reached the defendants, Triantafyllou told the court that CDs containing surveillance data were delivered to Lavranos’s private office in an
Athens suburb by police officers. A similar claim has already been made in court by her colleague, investigative journalist Tasos Telloglou.Triantafyllou also described what she called suspicious timing surrounding key developments in the case. After the publication of a major report by the digital rights group Citizen Lab, Intellexa reportedly moved employees out of its offices and shifted operations to remote work. She testified that Tal Dilian traveled to Greece the day after Inside Story revealed the surveillance of journalist Thanasis Koukakis, allegedly to reassure company staff. She also noted that an aircraft linked to Dilian was grounded in Tel Aviv for ten weeks during the same period.
Triantafyllou referred to sales proposals made by Intellexa to foreign clients. In one case involving a Middle Eastern country, the documents explicitly stated that while Predator could be used beyond the client’s borders, surveillance targets in Israel, the United States, and Greece were excluded.
Another line of testimony focused on the operational logistics behind Predator-linked surveillance. Triantafyllou confirmed that a Cosmote employee, Konstantinos Petrisis, was simultaneously receiving payments from the intelligence service. Petrisis had been linked to the procurement of a prepaid bank card later used to send Predator-infected messages to opposition leader Nikos Androulakis and at least 25 other individuals. According to Triantafyllou, Petrisis received a monthly supplement of €500 from the intelligence service while working at a telecommunications store.
A request by Androulakis’s legal team to summon Petrisis as a witness was rejected by the court. The presiding judge ruled that the trial was not examining the intelligence service itself and that Petrisis’s testimony would not materially advance the proceedings.
The proceedings are set to continue on Monday, January 19. Among those expected to testify are arms dealer Stavros Komnopoulos, who is alleged to have covered the rent—via his company Kestrel—for the homes of former Intellexa executives Merom Harpaz and Rotem Farkas, and Sofia Strigari, the owner of a microbiology laboratory who carried out COVID-19 testing for Intellexa and Krikel personnel during the period in question. According to court testimony, Felix Bitzios’s personal assistant, Lina Katsouda, referred to Strigari as “Yiannis Lavranos’s personal doctor.”
