Political sniping between the leftist government and center-right main opposition continued unabated on Monday, with the latter pointing to a previously unknown trip by embattled Minister of State Nikos Pappas to Venezuela in 2013, before SYRIZA assumed power in January 2015.
Reports in Athens on Monday also maintained that Pappas was accompanied on the visit by a Cypriot attorney, Artemis Artemiou, who specializes in off-shore companies.
The lawyer also first drew opposition New Democracy’s (ND) scrutiny earlier in the month, as the party charged that the Cypriot attorney is identified in the so-called “Panama Papers” and a recent visitor to the prime minister’s official office in Athens.
On his part, the minister referred to an effort by ND to “create impressions”, speaking on an Athens-area radio station on Monday.
He nevertheless confirmed his visit to South American country, saying that he led a delegation of SYRIZA cadres in contacts with the radical socialist government in Caracas, in order to consider “… at the time whether SYRIZA’s leader (current Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras) could visit that country, as well as an examination of other possibilities, in relation to the purchase of farm products from Venezuela’s state-owned supermarkets…”
The report of the Venezuela junket comes a week after a Greek high court struck down a controversial broadcast license law that Pappas’ ministry prepared and eagerly backed. In fact, the minister blamed the timing of the report, published in the Athens daily “Eleftheros Typos” on Monday, on pressure arising from the broadcast licensing quagmire.
The high court ruling and the subsequent fall-out has spelled a dramatic domestic policy defeat for Tsipras and his leftist government, one unrelated to institutional creditors, bailout terms or even the course of the economy.
In the early afternoon, 46 ND deputies tabled a Parliament question demanding to know what, if any, relationship Artemiou has with the current government and why he visited the premier’s office recently.
Additionally, the opposition lawmakers inquired as to the purpose of the trip in 2013, as well as which SYRIZA cadres and business people participated.
