Former Minister Andreas Loverdos to be Prosecuted for Involvement in ''Novartis Case''

Eleni Touloupaki, The Head of the Athens Prosecutor’s Office responsible for corruption allegations, has decided to send the file with the details of Andreas Loverdos’ involvement in the so-called ”Novartis case” to the Greek Parliament, Greek media reported on Thursday afternoon.
The Greek Parliament will now have to decide whether or not Loverdos’ parliamentary immunity will be revoked. If it is revoked, then the Prosecutor will be able to charge him with the crime of bribery.
At the same time, Touloupaki decided that there is still not enough evidence to support the prosecution of the Governor of the Bank of Greece, Yiannis Stournaras, so his case was tossed out.
Initially, more than ten Greek politicians had been involved in the controversial ”Novartis case”.
Andreas Loverdos is the first politician to be officially prosecuted for his involvement in the case, as no evidence has yet been found for anyone else who was allegedly involved.
The cases of Evangelos Venizelos, Antonis Samaras, Panagiotis Pikrammenos, Marios Salmas, George Koutroumanis and Andreas Likourentzos have already been sent to the Prosecutor’s archives, since no evidence whatsoever to support their involvement in the scandal had been found.
The cases of Adonis Georgiadis and Dimitris Avramopoulos are still under investigational the present time.
The ”Novartis case” is a complex scandal with major international implications.
It involves a massive network of employees of the Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis and politicians from many countries.
The company had been allegedly bribing doctors and politicians to promote its own drugs to markets in several countries, including Greece.
Loverdos, an MP and former Minister with the center-left PASOK (now KINAL) party, has not made any comments on the latest developments yet, but he has repeatedly said that he has no involvement in the case, accusing the former SYRIZA government of trying to sully his reputation.