New Democracy spokesperson Alexandra Sdouko accused Alexis Tsipras of hypocrisy over his calls for transparency, after a newspaper report revived claims that he held a secret meeting with envoys of Venezuela's Nicolas Maduro in Athens in June 2012.
Sdouko's statement came in response to a call for transparency made by Tsipras, who now leads the Greek Left Coalition. She said Tsipras was right to demand transparency from others, but that he owed the same standard himself.
She pointed to a report published that day in the newspaper Eleftheros Typos tis Kyriakis, which she said brought back the case of a meeting between Tsipras and two envoys sent by Maduro, held in Athens in June 2012, in the run-up to that year's national elections. At the time, Tsipras led SYRIZA, the party he took into government in January 2015 before serving as prime minister until 2019.
The questions Sdouko raised
Sdouko said Tsipras had still not answered a series of questions about the episode. She asked what exactly was discussed at the meeting between Tsipras, his close associates and senior officials of the Venezuelan regime, which took place before SYRIZA came to power.
She also asked why the meeting was never made public and what, if anything, was agreed between the two sides, and whether there had been any commitment of assistance from the Venezuelan side, and if so, of what kind.
Sdouko further asked why Venezuelan government aircraft landed in Greece at least three times between 2018 and 2019 without any announcement from the SYRIZA government at the time, a detail she said was also referenced in the newspaper's report that day.
She finished by asking whether Tsipras himself, or SYRIZA during his time as party president, had received money from the Maduro regime, which she said was reported to have funded other left-wing parties in Europe.
Background to the claims
Maduro has led Venezuela since 2013, succeeding Hugo Chavez, and has faced repeated accusations from opponents and Western governments of financing allied political movements abroad. SYRIZA, the party Tsipras founded into a governing force, positioned itself on the radical left and built ties with a number of Latin American governments during his leadership.
The claims about the 2012 Athens meeting are not new. A related report circulating the same week carried a fresh account of a secret meeting between Tsipras and Maduro officials, which also referenced black suitcases. Health Minister Adonis Georgiadis responded to that account sarcastically, remarking that Tsipras's middle name was honesty.
Sdouko did not set out any further steps New Democracy intended to take on the matter, and the source report did not indicate whether Tsipras or the Greek Left Coalition had responded to the questions.
