Tasos Telloglou

The surveillance of Koukakis' phone turned out to be the tip of an iceberg whose scale only began emerging last summer, as the government of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis was swamped with claims that it had spied on the phones of journalists, opposition politicians, oligarchs and top state officials.

Sixteen prominent constitutional law professors have strongly criticised Greece's chief prosecutor Isidoros Dogiakos after he issued a controversial legal opinion arguing that the independent authority responsible for privacy, ADAE, cannot conduct audits of telecommunication companies to find out who is under surveillance by the country's intelligence agency.

Recent legislative changes introduced in the wake of the phone-tapping scandal mean that the independent Authority for Communication Security and Privacy (ADAE) no longer has the authority to respond to requests by citizens regarding whether they were put under surveillance for national security reasons, a Supreme Court prosecutor said in an opinion issued on Tuesday.

A Piraeus misdemeanors court on Wednesday handed suspended 15-month prison sentences to a reporter of the Parapolitika newspaper and its publisher after finding them guilty of defaming Kathimerini investigative journalist Tasos Telloglou.

By Tasos Telloglou

New debts to the Greek state are constantly mounting while the repayment of old ones has slowed down considerably, according to a Finance Ministry document seen by Kathimerini.