At the 35th hearing of Greece’s wiretapping trial, Zacharias Kesses, lawyer for the civil plaintiffs, delivered a sweeping and highly critical address, accusing key institutions and officials of systematic inaction and cover-up in the country’s largest surveillance scandal in decades. Describing the proceedings as the most important trial of recent years for the rule of law, Kesses warned of what he called a profound “institutional retreat” that has undermined democratic safeguards at every level.
The case is being heard by the Single-Member Misdemeanor Court of Athens and concerns an illegal surveillance network linked to Predator, a powerful commercial spyware capable of covertly accessing mobile phones. Among the defendants are Greek nationals Giannis Lavranos and Felix Bitzios, as well as senior executives of Intellexa, Tal Dilian and Sara Hamou, the company associated with Predator. Prosecutors argue that the network operated in parallel with lawful state surveillance, raising serious concerns about the relationship between private spyware operators and Greece’s National Intelligence Service (EYP).
Kesses said Greece is experiencing a “collective trauma” affecting all core pillars of the rule of law, including legal certainty, judicial independence, equality before the law, and the separation of powers. He argued that transparency in lawmaking has been eroded by last-minute legislative amendments designed to shield surveillance activities from scrutiny, while judicial accountability has been weakened by what he described as coordinated efforts to protect political figures and downgrade criminal liability.
A central part of his address focused on the failure of institutional actors to investigate the scandal after it became public. He accused successive prosecutors at the highest level of either avoiding substantive inquiries or actively obstructing them, citing superficial investigations, failure to cross-check surveillance data across agencies, and the decision to summon senior figures as witnesses rather than suspects despite formal complaints against them.
He also criticized Greece’s National Transparency Authority, whose 2022 report concluded that no procurement contracts existed between the state and companies linked to Predator. According to Kesses, this finding was repeatedly used to dismiss evidence pointing to a unified surveillance mechanism and played a key role in shelving the case. Testimony in court, he said, exposed the investigation’s lack of depth and rigor.
Parliament was not spared. Kesses described the parliamentary inquiry into the scandal as a “farce,” citing evidence that witnesses were supplied in advance with pre-written questions by ruling-party lawmakers, while key figures implicated in the affair were never summoned to testify, even remotely.
Law enforcement agencies were accused of conducting searches with advance warning and limited scope, allowing evidence to disappear. The Cyber Crime Unit, he said, arrived at company premises only after equipment had been removed, carrying out no meaningful investigation.
Kesses reserved particular criticism for the intelligence service itself, which he said showed no interest in probing the targeting of its own officials and continued cooperating with companies linked to the accused. He argued that oversight bodies were either neutralized through political pressure or rendered ineffective by internal obstruction.
Concluding, Kesses called the Predator affair synonymous with “cover-up,” arguing that the true scandal lies not only in the use of spyware against politicians, journalists, and officials, but in the coordinated effort by defendants, institutions, and the state to suppress the truth. He urged the court to initiate a genuine restoration of the rule of law, even against the most powerful interests.
