Senior officials named in the Sandy affair allegations will be called to give statements to police as part of the ongoing investigation, a source told Phileleftheros.
The Sandy affair erupted when journalist and parliamentary candidate Makarios Drousiotis published a social media post titled “Paedophilia, sell-offs, surveillance and rigged trials,” alleging the existence of an organised network involving current and former officials, among them former President Nikos Anastasiades, former Supreme Court judge Michalakis Christodoulou, Attorney General Giorgos Savvides and Assistant Attorney General Savvas Angelides.
Sandy is the 45-year-old woman at the centre of the allegations, whose lawyer Nicos Clerides had held an archive of messages since around 2019. All those named have denied the allegations.
The Cabinet subsequently sent all digital evidence to Europol’s cybercrime unit for forensic examination.
The investigation so far has focused on the credibility of those messages. Sandy has testified that screenshots are the product of fabrication through digital applications, and has allegedly claimed in other instances that she was lying in order to appear to have knowledge of things and situations, Phileleftheros reports. Police have treated her account with scepticism, amid concern that it may reflect pressure following the public furore rather than a considered position.
Two key parameters are now emerging from the inquiry. The first is whether investigators will attempt to identify Sandy’s motives, or examine the possibility that she was induced to spread fabricated messages with false claims. The second concerns the officials implicated in the messages, with investigators attempting to build a picture of what is alleged to be a network subverting the Republic, involving Supreme Court judges, executive officials and powerful political figures.
Legal sources told Phileleftheros it is important that all aspects of the case are examined and all scenarios covered, not only the line of verifying or disproving digital files. This matters, they said, even though time has been lost since the revelations first appeared on March 30.
A source with knowledge of the investigative team, operating from the Police Academy, told Phileleftheros on condition of anonymity that the investigation will not be limited to Sandy and Clerides, who became aware of the messages between 2019 and 2020 and against whom a search warrant was executed on Holy Saturday. Asked whether officials named in the messages would be called to give statements, the source answered yes.
Arnaoutis, speaking to journalists after a press conference at the Traffic Education Park, sought to signal the same. “The investigation is not being conducted to confirm any narrative. It is being conducted to arrive at the truth based on the evidence. We have made substantive progress in examining the case and are already at its core. Statements are being taken from all involved and named persons, evidence and data are being evaluated and the actual facts and information emerging are being recorded methodically,” he said. He added that “no person is above the law and above the process.”
Drousiotis appeared on Alpha TV’s to respond to statements by deputy government spokesman Yiannis Antoniou, who he said had mischaracterised his position. “What Mr Antoniou said — that I adopt these messages, meaning their content, meaning as facts — is arbitrary. I say what the messages say. I did not judge anyone. I condemned no one. It is very carefully worded and if you see my statement to the police, which I made public, I refer to ‘the message states’,” he said.
On the allegations of paedophilia attributed to a former Supreme Court judge, Drousiotis was direct. “I do not adopt the paedophilia, let us say, which I am not in a position to investigate. But the messages are well-founded. I am not in a position to conduct DNA testing, I am not a criminal investigator, I do not have investigative powers. I have investigated at a journalistic level beyond what was required,” he said.
On the possible involvement of Greek Deputy Minister Giorgos Mylonakis, who had separately filed legal action against Drousiotis and was subsequently hospitalised following a brain aneurysm, Drousiotis said Mylonakis had called him to question whether the messages were truly attributable to him. “I told him I do not know you, Mr Mylonakis, but let me check my files and I will tell you. And I sent him screenshots of the messages with the phone number. And it was the same number from which he had contacted me,” Drousiotis said.
On Sandy’s alleged connection to the Presidential Palace, Drousiotis said she told him at their first meeting that she worked there and gave him the impression she knew it well. He said Clerides had shown him messages sent from the Presidential Palace at a meeting, and that he subsequently asked Clerides to resend those messages to his lawyer Leto Cariolou.
According to Drousiotis, Clerides sent a message to Cariolou at 11pm saying he was sending one message for now and asking them not to publish it yet, as he had more and would buy a new phone to publish them the following day. “At 1am they issued a search warrant. At 8am they took his phone. Those specific messages were deleted,” Drousiotis said, adding that he still has the older messages and will search for them.
All allegations in the Sandy affair remain unverified. Those named have denied wrongdoing.
Read more:
