“For four years I experienced a real desert crossing, a personal ordeal,” confides Eleni Touloupaki, a former anti-corruption prosecutor, with a contorted face on January 30 at her lawyer’s office. Charged with “abuse of power” in a special court in Athens since November, she spoke for the first time on January 23 and is expected to know her fate by the end of February.
Since 2017, the judge has been leading the Novartis investigation, a case involving the Swiss drugmaker accused of bribing senior officials and doctors to inflate drug prices in the Greek market. Back then, in the midst of an economic crisis, Novartis marketed ten products at high prices, even though creditors (International Monetary Fund, European Union, European Central Bank) closely monitored the country’s healthcare spending. According to investigations by the Greek judiciary, these practices cost the state around 3 billion euros.
Ten politicians are involved
The scandal stemmed from an FBI investigation. Novartis’ Greek subsidiary admits that between 2012 and 2015, US police paid bribes to public hospital workers to boost sales of certain drugs. 2020 Novartis agrees to pay $347 million (317 million euros) as part of a settlement with the US Department of Justice. In Greece, this case is not condemned. But in June, the Greek Minister of Health demanded 214 million euros in damages from the company.
Never has a case so divided political leaders in Greece. The investigations, uncovered under Alexis Tsipras’ left-wing government, involved more than a hundred doctors, some thirty high-ranking officials and ten politicians from the former right-wing (New Democracy) and socialists (Pasok-Kinal). “Since drug prices are set by very senior officials, the investigations inevitably reached influential political figures at some point,” explains Eleni Touloupaki.
threat
New Democracy and Pasok-Kinal then accused the prime minister’s party, Syriza, but also Ms Touloupaki of “planning” to harm these politicians. Some of the accused, mainly former health ministers, then decided to sue the public prosecutor. “From the start we received all kinds of threats from the politicians we were investigating. Strangers broke into my house twice, taking only documents and personal notes and sending me a clear message about the danger I was exposing myself to (…) I was aware that I was dealing with a very serious corruption, but the Reality was beyond my imagination,” states Eleni Touloupaki today.
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