Eleni Touloupaki has been Greece’s best-known prosecutor for years. She was born 56 years ago in Crete, she was head of the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office until the new Greek Government was in charge of modifying that structure. Several European institutions had recognized her pioneering work in the prosecution of racist crimes. From anti-corruption, while Greece suffered the rigors of the austerity of the economic crisis, she focused on pursuing tax evasion. In her opinion, corruption had a lot to do with Greece being in that situation. From that time are the Falciani list, the Borgians list, the Panama papers and other important corruption cases that passed through her hands. Also the case that has now put her career at risk in the midst of a pandemic: the Novartis scandal.
In 2016, two senior Novartis executives traveled from Greece to the United States to testify as protected witnesses. They recognized that the multinational pharmaceutical company had been bribing thousands of doctors for a decade to prescribe their drugs over cheaper alternatives. The FBI sent the testimonies to Greece and, with the left-wing Syriza coalition still in government, the investigation led to the indictment of two former prime ministers and eight ministers from the previous executives, the conservative New Democracy (ND) and the historic Pasok . However, the victory in the 2019 elections by an absolute majority of the ND conservatives was also a turnaround in the direction of the accusations: currently, the only ones accused by the Novartis case there are three prosecutors and five journalists who published data on bribes. Among them stands out Eleni Touloupaki.
In the United States, Novartis was fined 678 million dollars to close the case. In Greece, on Wednesday, March 2, it will be her, the prosecutor, who will declare as investigated. “The experience that I am living as a consequence of the opening of the process against me by a structured and powerful political-economic system, reveals the weakness of a person in the face of a system that moves without norms or rules, only for convenience. ”, he tells EL PAÍS. But she knows how to see the positive side. She believes that, although painful, such an experience enriches legal operators and makes it easier for them to empathize with those who suffer from the administration of justice without understanding it.
Kostas Vaxevanis, director of the newspaper Document and one of the five journalists accused, believes that although in many countries obstacles are placed on those who persecute corruption, the extreme degree with which it is being done in Greece is unique. No one could have imagined until recently that three anti-corruption prosecutors could be charged simply for investigating a corruption case. The lawyer who defends Touloupaki, Vassilis Chirdaris, maintains that the prosecutor is a symbol, and that what is in danger is the very independence of the institutions. Although the case already exceeds 300,000 pages, for Chirdaris working with her in the preparation of the defense is proving easy. She is a very solid jurist, he says, that she analyzes every detail.
If you want to support the development of quality journalism, subscribe.
subscribe
Eleni Touloupaki is the first lawyer in her family. Her father worked for a long-distance bus company. She describes her parents as ordinary people with great values, who influenced her to dedicate herself to justice. Like her brother, she says, he is a surgeon and works “at the service of human suffering.” She maintains that it is no coincidence that she is prosecuted for a case related to access to public health. According to her, she says, her firm ethical conviction is what guides her at all times and she feels supported by her family and her friends.
In her spare time, the prosecutor writes poetry and performs in a classical theater company, with which she has starred in, among others, The Eumenides of Aeschylus. The easy recourse would be to compare her to the heroine of a Greek tragedy, but she would not like her simile because she maintains that the administration of justice cannot, and should not, be a matter of heroism. In the same way, she categorically denies that her fight is political, despite the fact that the one who promoted her accusation was the Government, using Parliament, that is, destroying the very notion of separation of powers. She sees herself as a simple judicial official and defends that her fight is not partisan, but institutional. She alleges that she never entered the political game and only raises questions relating to the rule of law. She would govern who governs with the same conviction. Her lawyer, Chirdaris, also insists that she is not an activist, but just a prosecutor doing her job.
Although her prosecution as a defendant may mean the end of her career, she has no regrets. “We try to identify and bring to justice those practices in the health sector that cost lives or caused the disability of people who did not have access to medicines due to overpricing. If my commitment to these goals spells the end of my career, frankly, I prefer that to tacit acquiescence with injustice.”
subscribe here to the weekly newsletter of Ideas.
#Elena #Touloupaki #prosecutor #accused #investigating #large #pharmaceutical #company