The one-time top pharmaceutical executive in Greece continued his testimony on Friday before members of a Parliamentary fact-finding committee tasked with probing whether a years-old prosecutorial investigation into alleged kickbacks morphed into a judicial conspiracy.
Former Novartis vice-president and general manager Constantinos Frouzis told committee members that he left “disappointed” after his unofficial meeting with anti-corruption chief prosecutor Eleni Touloupaki and two other associate prosecutors in early 2018. According to widely reported press coverage on Friday, and despite the fact that the sessions were closed-door, Frouzis said he inferred from Touloupaki’s stance that she was only interested in information involving politicians.
By “politicians” in this case, he was referring to 10 past prime minister and ministers implicated by a trio of anonymous witnesses, with investigations of seven of the 10 subsequently shelved by the same anti-corruption unit that once conveyed the cases to parliament.
Frouzis directly charged, according to the same media reports, that the allegations made by the three anonymous witnesses proved to be baseless, at least in the seven already closed cases.
He reportedly declined to use the word “conspiracy”, something alluded to by sources close to the main opposition SYRIZA party, which was in power up until July 2019.
Although repeatedly implicated as the man who ordered that kickbacks be funneled to politicians, and even that he personally wheeled the cash to recipients in wheeled carry-ons, Frouzis was never officially summoned by Touloupaki and her associates to answer the charges made by the still unknown witnesses.
