ND in panic: Asimakopoulou, Stavrianoudakis guilty in email leak
An Athens court convicted four defendants with suspended sentences of eight to twenty months for leaking expatriate Greek email addresses before the 2024 European elections.
The sentences imposed range from eight to twenty months imprisonment, all with a three-year suspension. The prosecutor proposed and the court accepted the recognition of the mitigating factor of lawful living for all, while rejecting the mitigating factor of subsequent good behavior.
The sentences and charges
Former New Democracy MEP Anna-Michelle Asimakopoulou was sentenced to 20 months, while former general secretary of the Ministry of Interior Michalis Stavrianoudakis received 18 months. Both were found guilty of violating official confidentiality and violating personal data legislation.
The then-secretary for Expatriates of ND Nikos Theodороpoulos was sentenced to eight months and Menios Koromilas, who held the position of organizational secretary for Local Government and Crisis Management of the party, to 12 months. Both were found guilty of violating personal data legislation.
As Newsbomb reports in its publication, Asimakopoulou was found guilty by majority vote for the violation of official confidentiality, with the court president dissenting in favor of her acquittal. For the personal data charge the decision was unanimous.
Stavrianoudakis was found guilty by majority vote for both offenses, while here too the president had a dissenting opinion in favor of his acquittal. Theodороpoulos was unanimously acquitted for official confidentiality but found guilty by majority vote for the data charge. Koromilas was unanimously found guilty only for personal data.
The course of the trial
The case concerned the leak of a list with emails of expatriates, which was used for political communication. The charges focused on how the specific email addresses came from official files and how they ended up in the hands of ND officials.
The court, after hearing the lawyers and examining the evidence, reached the decisions announced today. The convicted will obviously appeal to higher courts, as suspended sentences do not lead to serving time, however the decision already carries political weight.
According to the report, the procedure was completed with the adoption of the prosecutor’s proposal regarding the mitigating factors, thus closing a chapter that had intensely occupied public discourse two years ago.
