Former PM Samaras requests that identity of protected witnesses in Novartis case be revealed

Former Greek prime minister Antonis Samaras has submitted an official request to the Financial Crimes Prosecutor, based on an article of law passed in 2024, asking that the true identities of two protected witnesses who testified against him in the Novartis case be revealed.

The application was submitted on June 27, 2024 and asks that the status of “witness of public interest” be stripped from the two individuals referred to by the code names “Maximos Sarafis” and “Aikaterini Kelesi”, and that his lawsuit against them for slander and false testimony, currently still pending before a prosecutor, be recovered.

A press release from Samaras’ office said that an additional memorandum was later submitted with the application following “revelations made in Parliament about the receipt of a pecuniary fee by [the witnesses’] lawyer, which strengthens the conviction that the above witnesses received a large sum of money for their testimony. This makes it obvious that their appellation as ‘protected’ was outside the law from the start.”