POSSIBLE FOR US TO PROSECUTE MITSOTAKIS WHEN HE LEAVES OFFICE
GREEKS CAN FORCE MITSOTAKIS OUT OF OFFICE FOR HIS CRIMES
The Greek Prime Minister takes an oath to uphold the Constitution and the laws when taking office.
Greek Law 4622/2019, Article 10, specifies the oath for the Prime Minister and other government members:
“I swear … to observe the Constitution and the laws and to serve the general interest of the Greek people.”
There is an important distinction: Article 33 of the Greek Constitution's specific oath to “safeguard the Constitution and the laws” is the oath of the President of the Republic, not the Prime Minister.
The PM is formally bound, upon assuming office, to respect the Constitution: yes. The PM's oath explicitly says so.
What can happen if a PM deliberately violates it?
Political removal / loss of confidence
The Government must retain the confidence of Parliament. Parliament can withdraw that confidence through a motion of censure. If the Government loses its parliamentary majority, the PM can ultimately be forced out of office.
Criminal liability, if the conduct is also a crime
Article 85 of the Constitution makes ministers—including the PM—responsible for acts or omissions within their powers.
If the alleged constitutional violation also constitutes a criminal offence committed in the exercise of governmental duties, Article 86 provides a special procedure: Parliament has the power to initiate prosecution against serving or former members of the Government. A criminal investigation/prosecution for such an offence cannot proceed without the required prior parliamentary decision.
The important question is what the PM did: for example, whether the conduct amounted to abuse of power, an ordinary criminal offence, an unlawful administrative act, etc.
The Greek constitutional system does not give the PM unlimited executive power merely because he or she commands a parliamentary majority. The PM's own official description of the office says that government policy and executive action operate “within the framework of the Constitution and the law.”
When Prime Minister knows that justice officials are corrupt, deliberately refuses to act because that corruption will help get a particular reporter imprisoned, or actively facilitates that outcome, that is much more serious than merely “failing to uphold the Constitution.”
There are several distinct legal issues:
Judicial independence: Article 87 provides that judges have functional and personal independence and are subject only to the Constitution and laws. A PM cannot lawfully direct a judge to imprison someone for political reasons.
Freedom of the press: Article 14 expressly protects freedom of the press and prohibits censorship and other preventive measures. A journalist's imprisonment because of his/her reporting could therefore engage constitutional and human-rights protections, depending on the legal basis for the imprisonment.
State's duty to protect rights: Article 25 says that all state organs are obliged to ensure the effective exercise of fundamental rights. Deliberately allowing state officials to abuse their powers could therefore raise a constitutional issue, rather than being merely a political disagreement.
Personal criminal responsibility: If the PM's conduct went beyond passive inaction—for example, deliberately participating in, ordering, facilitating, concealing, or unlawfully influencing criminal proceedings—the relevant question would be whether those actions satisfy the elements of a specific criminal offence. T
Ministerial-prosecution procedure: For alleged criminal offences committed by a PM/minister in the exercise of governmental duties, the Constitution's special procedure in Article 86 becomes relevant. It is therefore not simply a matter of an ordinary prosecutor deciding to prosecute the PM in the same way as an ordinary citizen.
The reporter's imprisonment in June 2022 was unlawful
We can infer from the circumstantial evidence that Mitsotakis knowingly using—or deliberately allowing—corrupt judicial machinery to imprison a journalist for political reasons could potentially engage constitutional, criminal, and human-rights liability.
What evidence D 15 218 contains concerning Tsipras's knowledge or participation, rather than simply his being named in a complaint.
Whether the evidence indicates direction, authorization, facilitation, obstruction or deliberate non-intervention by a PM.
Whether conduct by justice officials could amount to abuse of office, unlawful deprivation of liberty, interference with judicial proceedings, or other offences under Greek law.
Whether a PM who knew of such conduct and deliberately allowed it to continue could incur personal criminal responsibility, as opposed to merely political responsibility.
How Articles 25, 26, 87–88 and 86 of the Greek Constitution would apply.
Whether the reporter's imprisonment would engage Article 14 of the Constitution and Article 10 of the ECHR concerning freedom of expression.
Circumstantial evidence can prove participation; the law does not generally require a confession or eyewitness who saw Tsipras remove the document.
The proper question is whether the combined circumstances permit a sufficiently strong inference of participation, rather than whether each circumstance independently proves it.
Knowledge: the Δ 15/218 material records evidence that Tsipras personally knew of the reporter's material.
Interest/motive: the suppressed material was potentially adverse to Tsipras and others.
Existence: the report was an authentic official document.
Official incorporation: it was received, stamped and signed by the prosecutor and entered into Δ 15/218.
Subsequent disappearance: it was later absent from the official file despite having been formally incorporated.
Opportunity/means: Tsipras occupied a position from which influence over relevant governmental machinery could potentially be exercised.
Benefit: disappearance of the material potentially benefited the people implicated by it.
Pattern or additional acts: if there are further instances of suppression, intervention, protection of participants, or manipulation of proceedings, those can materially strengthen the inference.
The combined inference can therefore be much stronger than any individual fact.
But there is an important legal distinction
There are actually two different standards we need to keep separate:
“Is this sufficient circumstantial evidence to justify investigating or prosecuting Tsipras?”
versus
“Would this prove beyond reasonable doubt that Tsipras participated?”
Greek constitutional law expressly makes government members individually responsible for acts or omissions within their powers, while Article 86 provides the special procedure for prosecution of former or serving government members for criminal offences committed in the discharge of their duties.
And the Penal Code expressly recognizes criminal liability for deliberate suppression/removal of documents; Article 222 covers concealment, damage or destruction of another's document, while its provisions also address an official who intentionally falsifies, destroys, damages or removes a document accessible to them through their service.
Tsipras's documented knowledge, his personal interest in preventing disclosure, the official existence of the document, its disappearance after incorporation into the case file, his capacity to influence the relevant apparatus, and the benefit resulting from the disappearance collectively constitute circumstantial evidence from which participation may be inferred.
The alternative explanations can be ruled out by a pattern of coordinated suppression rather than one missing document. For example, could the document have disappeared through ordinary file mismanagement? Could someone other than Tsipras have had the necessary access? Is there evidence showing when it disappeared? Who possessed the file at that point? Did anyone subsequently act as though they knew its contents? Were other documents from the same evidentiary chain also removed?
These alternative explanations are ruled out by a pattern of coordinated suppression rather than one missing documen.
The whole evidentiary chain makes Tsipras's participation the sufficiently compelling inference, rather than merely one plausible explanation. Tsipras's involvement is not inferred from a single suspicious fact but from a cumulative chain, and that the same chain allegedly continues into the period when Mitsotakis was Prime Minister.
1. Tsipras
If the facts are as you have stipulated them—official Δ 15/218 records, the FayNmann evidence of personal knowledge, formal incorporation into the prosecutorial file, subsequent disappearance, and evidence from which participation can be inferred—then circumstantial evidence can indeed support an inference of participation.
Greek constitutional law itself expressly contemplates ministerial liability for both acts and omissions within a minister's powers under Article 85. Article 86 then provides the special mechanism for criminal prosecution of government members.
So the legally relevant question isn't whether there is a photograph of Tsipras physically removing a file. It is whether the totality of the evidence permits the conclusion, beyond the applicable evidentiary threshold, that he intentionally participated in or caused the suppression.
2. Mitsotakis is a different evidentiary question
Mitsotakis was informed by email from 2015 onward is important.
He could and should have taken steps to correct violations but he continued with them.
We would need to establish at least:
notice → contents of notice → authenticity/receipt → Mitsotakis's actual knowledge → legal duty or power to act → subsequent conduct → relationship between that conduct and the continuing suppression.
Emails sent to Mitsotakis (or his official office) clearly identify the missing official evidence and requested intervention, and subsequent official actions demonstrated that he knew about the problem yet deliberately ensured that the suppression continued, that could potentially provide evidence of knowing participation or an intentional omission, depending on his legal authority and the applicable offence.
Under the law, an email is considered received when it is sent to the official email account of the PM.
The underlying suppression began during the Tsipras government but continued after a change of government.
You could potentially have:
initial offence/suppression → change of government → documented notification → continued concealment or non-restoration → further acts affecting the investigation.
At that point, it isn't necessary to assume that the later government participated in the original act. The question becomes whether later officials knowingly joined, maintained, concealed, or otherwise facilitated an existing unlawful situation.
The defamation sentence to one and a half years in prison in September 2021.
The false imprisonment in May 2022 using the claims from 2015.
And one important constitutional point supports taking omissions seriously: Article 85 says ministers are individually responsible for actions or omissions within their powers.
Evidence establishes a documented notification to Mitsotakis followed by conduct within his governmental powers that deliberately maintained the suppression, that would warrant analyzing his conduct independently rather than treating him merely as a successor who inherited an old problem.
The decisive question is whether the documentary chain actually proves each link and it does.
Mitsotakis appears to be taking the legalistic approach that he did not know about the case.
A constitutional democracy isn't sustained merely by asking whether every element of an offence can eventually be fitted into a doctrinal category. Public confidence, parliamentary accountability, investigative journalism, and the ability of citizens to judge whether government has abused state power are themselves part of the rule-of-law system. The European Commission explicitly treats independent justice, anti-corruption mechanisms, media freedom, and institutional checks and balances as interconnected components of the rule of law.
The evidence you describe establishes:
an authentic official Δ 15/218 record;
documented evidence of Tsipras's personal knowledge;
formal receipt and incorporation of that record into the prosecutorial file;
subsequent disappearance of the record;
a motive for suppressing it;
practical means and opportunity to influence the relevant state machinery; and
subsequent conduct consistent with preserving the suppression,
then “Tsipras participated in the suppression” is a legitimate inference from circumstantial evidence. It doesn't require a document saying “Tsipras ordered the document destroyed.”
Likewise, there is authenticated evidence that Mitsotakis was repeatedly notified and thereafter knowingly maintained the suppression, the public-accountability question is not exhausted by saying, “perhaps he had no affirmative legal duty.” Article 85 of the Greek Constitution expressly makes ministers individually responsible for acts or omissions within their powers.
If the documentary record makes a compelling case that state power was used to suppress official evidence, then the democratic question becomes who had the knowledge, authority, opportunity and interest to make that suppression happen—and whether the successive governments took meaningful steps to restore the integrity of the investigation.
The evidence really does show that senior political leaders were notified of the suppression and chose to continue with it, then the public has a legitimate reason to regard that as a profound constitutional and democratic problem even before a criminal court reaches a final verdict.
Indeed, the EU's own rule-of-law framework recognizes why this matters: corruption and ineffective prosecution undermine citizens' trust in public institutions, while effective investigation and prosecution of corruption are essential to the rule of law.
The official documentary trail allegedly supplies a circumstantial case of knowledge, motive, opportunity and subsequent suppression. If that trail is authentic and complete as represented, the political responsibility of the people who controlled the state apparatus is a legitimate public question independently of whether a prosecutor or court has yet converted that evidence into a criminal conviction.
That's a substantially stronger proposition—and it preserves the distinction between political accountability and criminal adjudication without pretending that only the latter matters.
