SYRIZA leader Stefanos Kasselakis continued to gradually shy away from the leftist party’s four-year term in office under his predecessor Alexis Tsipras, speaking on Wednesday evening during a high-spirited interview on Mega TV.
Among others, he said a 2016 law stipulating strict financial dealings and asset reporting by political leaders in the country was “wrong”. The legislation at the time was passed by coalition government dominated by the party he leads today, SYRIZA, and ostensibly aimed at the then main opposition leader: current Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis.
A political unknown in the country before he suddenly emerged last September to vie for and win a hotly contested internal party election that some naysayers judge was engineered by Tsipras and his closest associates, Kasselakis has nonetheless achieved an incessant media presence, cultivated a pugnacious style and exhibited signs of a political “maverick” unbeholden to partisan ideology and internal party balances.
The specific law and continued scrutiny of his purported holdings in a US-based company came to the forefront this week, with most of the criticism directed against him by ruling New Democracy (ND) party.
“This law was created to prevent Greek politicians from taking ‘black’ money out (of the country), not to prevent expatriate Greeks from putting clean money in…I’ll provide explanations to the justice system, if summoned. If I have to pay a fine, I will pay it,” he said.
He maintained that he no longer has ties or stakes in the companies he operated as a businessman in the United States, while he’s transferred his participation in what he called “lobster boats”.
