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Costas
Vaxevanis (R) speaks to a journalist during a break in his trial
(AFP, Louisa
Gouliamaki)
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ATHENS — A
Greek court on Thursday acquitted a journalist of breach of privacy in
publishing the names of 2,000 Greeks with Swiss bank accounts, in a case that
has exposed the debt-plagued Greek government to charges of a cover-up.
Costas
Vaxevanis, a 46-year-old veteran television journalist who now publishes a
magazine, has insisted he was doing his job and accused ministers responsible
for vetting the list for possible tax evasion of doing nothing for two years.
"We
will endure this. Will they?" Vaxevanis tweeted ahead of the trial.
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| Costas Vaxevanis (AFP, Louisa Gouliamaki) |
Calling for
his conviction, the prosecutor said: "You have publicly ridiculed a series
of people, you have delivered these people to a society that is thirsty for
blood."
"The
solution to the problems that the country is facing is not cannibalism,"
added the prosecutor.
But after
12 hours of trial, the court acquitted Vaxevanis.
The ruling
was met with applause, while a visibly emotional Vaxevanis thanked the judge.
Several
media workers had testified on behalf of Vaxevanis, including the head of the
International Federation of Journalists, Jim Bumelha, who called the trial an
"absurd farce".
"Colleagues
from all over the world will be keeping an eye on this. If something happens to
Costas, we will gather all of the forces that we have got, wherever we are, to
campaign for his release," he told reporters ahead of the verdict.
The head of
the Athens union of journalists, Dimitris Trimis, also took the stand.
"I
would have done the same thing," Trimis told the court, according to
excerpts posted on a blog operated by Vaxevanis.
"A
bank account is not personal data, we live in an era of transparency,"
Trimis said.
A radical
leftist lawmaker whose father is on the journalist's legal team denounced the
case as a "blow to democracy".
Amnesty
International's deputy programme director for Europe and Central Asia, Marek
Marczynski, said ahead of the ruling that it was "deeply troubling"
that Vaxevanis is facing charges "for disclosing information in the public
interest".
"This
step increases the risk that other journalists will censor themselves and
refrain from legitimate criticism of the government to avoid prosecution,"
he said.
Vaxevanis
has accused the Greek state of hypocrisy and says the justice system is bowing
to a corrupt political system.
"Our
politicians declare themselves to be democrats. I see no evidence of
this," he wrote in Britain's The Times newspaper on Thursday.
"I
wonder if Greek justice will show that the law safeguards the public interest
and freedom of speech... in journalism you must do what you think is right
without worrying about the consequences," he wrote.
The
journalist has also accused Greek media of burying the story.
Vaxevanis'
"Hot Doc" magazine on Saturday published the names of more than 2,000
Greeks, allegedly from a controversial list of HSBC account holders that was
originally leaked by a bank employee and passed to Greece in 2010 by France's
then finance minister Christine Lagarde, who is now IMF chief.
Greek
authorities took no action given that the list was considered stolen data that
could not be used against potential tax evaders.
When the
case resurfaced last month, it took several days for officials to even locate a
copy of the so-called "Lagarde List".
Among those
named are prominent businessmen, shipowners, lawyers, doctors, journalists and
a former minister, as well as companies, housewives and students although no
deposit sums were published.
The data has
been the subject of intense discussion, with the government facing calls to use
it to crack down on potential tax cheats as the country grapples with a massive
debt crisis.
On
Thursday, a special economic prosecutor asked parliament to investigate whether
previous finance ministers could be faulted for failing to take action on the
list, media reports said.
Evangelos
Venizelos, the leader of the socialist Pasok party and a former finance
minister, told a parliament committee that he had ordered the finance
ministry's tax police to investigate, a claim which the department's chief at
the time denies.
Ex-finance
minister George Papaconstantinou, the first recipient of the data in 2010, said
he did not know what had happened to the original version of the list, raising
speculation that it could have been tampered with.
Current
finance chief Yannis Stournaras has asked France to re-send the list.
Vaxevanis
says he got the information in an anonymous letter whose sender claimed to have
received it from a politician.
On
Wednesday, police arrested another journalist who claimed to have in his
possession a list of finance ministry documents allegedly stolen by hackers
from the state general accounting office.
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