A Greek court on Monday convicted a former European Parliament lawmaker with the governing New Democracy party and another three people of privacy and confidentiality breaches over the leak of data belonging to diaspora Greeks.
All four defendants were given suspended sentences of up to 20 months over the incident, in which an Interior Ministry list of email addresses was passed on to former MEP Anna Michelle Asimakopoulou for use in canvassing just before the June 2024 European Parliamentary elections.
Asimakopoulou was sentenced Monday to 20 months in prison, suspended for three years, and a former Interior Ministry secretary-general, Michalis Stavrianoudakis, received an 18-month suspended sentence.
Two former senior organizers with the conservative ND party – Nikos Theodoropoulos and Menios Koromilas – were sentenced to 8 and 12 months, respectively.
The list of email addresses had been harvested from Greeks abroad who registered to vote through the post in the elections. It was subsequently used by Asimakopoulou to solicit their backing.
The prosecutor had urged the court to show clemency due to the defendants’ previous law-abiding life.
The country’s independent personal data protection agency has already issued fines over the case, ordering the Interior Ministry to pay €400,000, ND and Asimakopoulou €40,000 and the two former party officials €10,000 each.
Greece’s supreme administrative court, the Council of State, subsequently annulled the fine imposed on ND.
