Reports emerged on Saturday of Panagiotis Kontoleon, the former head of Greece’s National Intelligence Service who resigned on Friday, alleging that the Armenian and Ukrainian intelligence services had requested the surveillance of Nikos Androulakis, leader of the socialist opposition PASOK party.
In response to the claim covered in local media, Tigran Mkrtchian, Armenia’s Ambassador to Greece, called it a “shameless lie”, stressing that “Armenia has never asked any government to listen to anyone’s phone.”
Ukraine’s Ambassador to Greece Sergii Shutenko also rejected the allegations about Kyiv’s involvement.
The most high-profile scandal in Greece’s domestic politics in recent years came to light last week after Androulakis, who is also an MEP, revealed that the European Parliament’s cyber security service had informed him that a spyware called Predator had been installed on his phone.
A few days before that, the head of the Greek special service admitted during a closed parliamentary hearing that spyware had been installed on the phone of a journalist working for media network CNN Greece.
In an address to the nation on Monday, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis distanced himself from the scandal, saying that he did not know that the National Intelligence Service had bugged the phone of a rival politician.