Thanou slammed for interfering in Novartis case

The head of the Greek prime minister's legal department, Vassiliki Thanou, has come under fire from the country's union of judges and prosecutors (EDE), who described her recent intervention in the Novartis bribery case as an "institutional faux pas."

In comments made earlier this week, Thanou, a former president of the Supreme Court, questioned the legality of convening the appeals court plenary so that the Novartis case file can be forwarded to an investigative magistrate. "It is not our business to throw politicians a lifeline," Nikolaos Salatas, the general secretary of EDE, told Thema 104.6 radio, while accusing Thanou of double standards over the case, in light of her push to raise judges' retirement age while she was still Supreme Court chief.

Speaking to Real FM, EDE representative Haralambos Sevastidis described the Novartis case, in which 10 Greek politicians...