Secretary General for International Economic Affairs and Openness, Giannis Smyrlis resigned from his position at the Foreign Ministry on Thursday. The resignation sparked political controversy with main opposition SYRIZA to claim another attempt of ruling New Democracy to cover up the wiretapping scandal.
In a letter addressed to Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias Thursday, Smyrlis said he was resigning due to “strictly personal reasons.”
In a post on social media, Smyrlis added that he wanted ot help the pre-election campaign of New Democracy.
The resignation triggered political tyrmoil with main opposition party SYRIZA to consider it as an attempt by the ND to remove the -now- former General Secretary of International Economic Relations and Outreach from the framework of the surveillance case.
Smyrlis was directly accused by SYRIZA a few days ago because he was the head of the department of the Greek bureaucracy that, against the official opposition, twice gave permission for the export of the Predator malware to a third country and more specifically to Madagascar in November of 2021, recalls newspaper ethnos.
In fact, Pavlos Polakis had published documents a few days ago, which according to him, proved this export, although the government has maintained for months that the Greek state had no dealings with companies that produce or trade the software in question.
A short time after the resignation of Mr. Smyrlis became known, SYRIZA issued a sharp statement in which it notes that the former secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is “a man of Kyriakos Mitsotakis” who did “dirty work” and there is an attempt by the government to ” washed away”, when in fact he cannot even be elected as a Member of Parliament.
Recent reports said Smyrlis was responsible for authorizing the sale of Predator spyware to Madagascar, a country with a history of cracking down on dissent, and two more African countries, reports daily kathimerini.
Former SYRIZA Minister Pavlos Polakis had published documents a few days ago, which as he claimed, proved this export, although the government has maintained for months that the Greek state had no dealings with companies that produce or trade the software in question.
The Foreign Ministry had launched already earlier an internal investigation following relevant reports by the New York Times and Kathimerini. In a response to a kathimerini question, the foreign ministry confirmed that in charge of such export licenses is the General Secretariat of Economic Diplomacy and Transparency, adding that it had “issued two export permits to Intellexa S.A. on November 15, 2021.”