A heated back-and-forth between Adonis Georgiadis and Marios Salmas unfolded on Parapolitika 90.1 on Wednesday morning (9/9), against the backdrop of the Novartis scandal resurfacing and Antonis Samaras’s moves toward forming a new political party. The fresh tension, which had ignited the previous day following the independent MP’s television appearance on OPEN — where he claimed to have initiated the Novartis investigation — continued on air, with Adonis Georgiadis firing back and Marios Salmas responding live on the radio station.
Opening the exchange, Adonis Georgiadis appeared on the show “Apenanti Mikrofona” with Sotiris Xenakis and Vassilis Skouris, where he argued that if Salmas had testified in the United States regarding Novartis, his testimony would necessarily relate to the period when Samaras was in government. For Georgiadis, it would be deeply contradictory for the former prime minister — who has repeatedly denounced the “Novartis conspiracy” — to include Salmas on the ballot of his new party. If Samaras were to do such a thing, Georgiadis declared, “the only thing left for him would be to put Touloupaki as head of the national list”:
“Mr. Salmas said the Americans had proposed that he serve as a witness in the United States and that he declined. For the Americans to propose that you become a witness, it means you approached them and told them you had evidence to contribute. What evidence could Mr. Salmas — who served as Deputy Minister of Health under the Samaras government — have offered? It would concern the Samaras period, not the Georgiadis period. So Mr. Salmas has knowledge of the period he served in, meaning the period when A. Samaras was prime minister. Therefore, the only reason the Americans would have said ‘come and be a witness’ was for him to say something damaging about Mr. Samaras. Is it really possible that Mr. Samaras — who has said everything there is to say about the Novartis conspiracy, who has vowed to see it through to the end — would now put Salmas on his ticket after yesterday’s statement? I don’t believe Samaras will do that. Because if he does put Salmas forward as a candidate, the only thing left for him after that is to make Touloupaki head of the national list,” he said in his characteristically sharp manner.
Regarding the messages that Marios Salmas claims to possess — which he submitted to Parliament and which allegedly concern Adonis Georgiadis’s communications with former protected witness Nikos Maniadakis and a Mr. Frouzis — the Health Minister reiterated that these are “not new evidence” that would justify reopening the case. This statement came in the wake of Pavlos Polakis’s move the previous day at the Supreme Court Prosecutor’s office.
Salmas on Georgiadis: He should have already resigned — unexplained money was found
Responding to Georgiadis’s statements, the independent MP — who confirmed reports of his impending inclusion in Samaras’s new party — reiterated his position that the minister should have already stepped down. Salmas made particular reference to the Novartis case during his appearance on the show “Ekini ki Ego” with Thanasis Fouskidis and Stella Gkantona, commenting on the archiving of the case against Adonis Georgiadis and claiming that money had been found that, in his view, could not be accounted for.
Specifically, regarding his clash with Georgiadis, he said: “I had stopped discussing things with Mr. Georgiadis. On Monday I came out and spoke about the Samaras party and the Thessaloniki International Fair — I said nothing about Mr. Georgiadis. Then Georgiadis comes out on his own and says ‘if Mr. Salmas joins Mr. Samaras, I will hold a press conference about what each of them said about the other.’ There is no statement — public or private — from me or Samaras about each other. Who asked him what I’m going to do with Samaras?”
He went on to add: “On the Novartis case, Mr. Georgiadis is deliberately creating a distortion. There is a difference between the Novartis case investigated by American authorities — which Novartis accepted and was convicted for, involving improper practices related to doctors and civil servants — and the so-called Novartis conspiracy under SYRIZA, in which ten politicians were implicated, including myself.”
When asked what new information he would have contributed to the Novartis investigation, he stressed:
“The report of the Public Administration Inspectors Body — which I ordered — which found that Novartis was paying Ministry employees on Pricing Committees to attend conferences. In other words, I would have contributed evidence of the Samaras government’s fight against corruption during my tenure as minister. There is one key difference: in the original American case, only one politician is named by witnesses — prior to the conspiracy — and that is Ad. Georgiadis. I said it, and he never denied it. His office informed him and told him ‘you’re implicated — they’re saying you asked Frouzis for advertising deals in exchange for television appearances,’ which constitutes passive bribery. Not only did he not deny it, he went out and said ‘he’s my friend.'”
When asked whether Georgiadis had also been the victim of a conspiracy like the others, he replied:
“The case in America is the one I tipped off iefimerida about in December 2016, so that an investigation could begin here too. The conspiracy started in 2018 — the two things are separate. What is Mr. Georgiadis trying to do by muddling everything together? I never talked about a conspiracy — I said an investigation should begin into the Greek side of the case, in which the only politician named was A. Georgiadis.”
“Whose minister was Mr. Georgiadis when the Novartis scandal was unfolding?” he was then asked, to which he replied:
“Mr. Samaras was not telling his ministers ‘go and demand kickbacks from pharmaceutical manufacturers’ while people were going hungry. Of the ten politicians, Mr. Georgiadis had his case archived with inconclusive findings. They found money in the possession of the New Democracy deputy leader and current Health Minister that he was never able to explain — and instead of resigning, he now comes out and concerns himself with what I’m going to do with Samaras.”
