Panagiotis Kontoleon steps down ‘following mistaken actions discovered throughout lawful wiretapping procedures’, prime minister’s workplace says.
The pinnacle of Greece’s intelligence service has stepped down, the federal government introduced, amid a scandal over the alleged utilization of surveillance malware.
EYP chief Panagiotis Kontoleon had offered his resignation “following mistaken actions discovered throughout lawful wiretapping procedures”, the workplace of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis stated in an announcement on Friday. Mitsotakis accepted the resignation, it added.
The announcement got here per week after the chief of the opposition PASOK occasion, Nikos Androulakis, filed a criticism with the supreme court docket over “tried” spying on his cell phone with Predator malware.
“Just a few days in the past I used to be knowledgeable by the European Parliament that there was an try to bug my cell phone with Predator surveillance software program,” Androulakis, who can be an MEP, advised reporters as he left the court docket in Athens on July 26.
The European Parliament arrange a particular service for MEPs to examine their telephones for unlawful surveillance software program following hacks utilizing adware much like Predator referred to as Pegasus.
The software program can infiltrate cell phones to extract information or activate a digital camera or microphone to spy on their house owners.
Androulakis used the service for “a precautionary examine of his telephone on June 28, 2022” and “from the primary examine, a suspicious hyperlink associated to the Predator surveillance instrument was detected”, PASOK stated in an announcement.
In the meantime, two legislators who spoke to the Reuters information company on situation of anonymity earlier this week stated Kontoleon had admitted throughout a parliamentary committee on July 29 that his service had spied on Thanasis Koukakis, a monetary journalist who works for media community CNN Greece.
The federal government says Greek authorities don’t use the adware allegedly deployed within the hacking of Koukakis and don’t do enterprise with firms promoting it.
In April, a Greek prosecutor started an investigation into an allegation by Koukakis that his smartphone had been contaminated by surveillance software program.
