The Public Prosecutor’s Office of District Court Judges charged Former President of the Hellenic Parliament and former SYRIZA MP Alexis Mitropoulos with felony charges for money laundering and tax evasion, Greek media report.
Mitropoulos, who served as the parliament’s vice president from February to October 2015 and as a SYRIZA MP from 2012 until August 2015, has been charged for a case that took place in 1999. The professor is being accused of not reporting 440,000 euros worth of income received from a case he had taken on as a lawyer.
Two other individuals who claimed to have been Mitropoulos’s legal partners in the case had accused him of not compensating them for their work and keeping the whole payment for himself. The accusations led to the revelations about the tax evasion.
Mitropoulos had vehemently denied the allegations and submitted evidence against them. During a press conference in August the former SYRIZA MP had claimed that the allegations are part of an effort to prevent him from running as an MP candidate in the September elections due to his negative remarks on the then recently passed bailout deal. Mitropoulos was ultimately not listed as a SYRIZA candidate in the September 20 elections.
The charges against Mitropoulos were issued on the same day that a new investigation was launched into current Greek Economy Minister Giorgos Stathakis for failing to declare income from real estate, on top of the one million euros of income he had failed to report in the past.
One of SYRIZA’s main commitments has been to strike down tax evasion, which is prevalent within Greek society.
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