The interim leadership of main opposition party SYRIZA intends to file an appeal on Monday with the judiciary against former leader Stefanos Kasselakis in order to press home allegations over the latter’s involvement with offshore companies.
The decision follows accusations by Kasselakis’ rivals within the leftist party that he retains ties to active offshore companies and lacks financial transparency and true asset disclosures.
In an official statement, SYRIZA party’s leadership accused Kasselakis of working in tandem with “external forces” to undermine the party’s role as the primary opposition in Parliament, claiming he is “desperately seeking political shelter with the non-autonomous PM (Kyriakos) Mitsotakis and vested interests.”
The statement, part of an acrimonious battle over control of the party, emphasized that SYRIZA is committed to transparency and accountability, holding its members to rigorous standards regardless of their political status.
The party’s announcement comes a day after the Greek-American businessman, investor and one-time Goldman Sachs junior trader announced he would form a new political party.
The call for a judicial probe follows statements by Thymios Georgopoulos, SYRIZA’s former financial director, who suggested that Kasselakis’ “undeclared offshore holdings” have sparked internal concern. Georgopoulos claimed that “the full extent of Kasselakis’ financial and legal ties will come to light, with further involvement from financial prosecutors expected.”
According to party sources that now express the “anti-Kasselakis” bloc controlling the repeatedly splintered and now faultering party, SYRIZA’s political secretariat will convene to formally authorize parliamentary group president Nikos Pappas to file the legal recourse, based, as it said, on purported evidence presented by former minister and outspoken current MP Pavlos Polakis, one of Kasselakis’ biggest detractors over the recent period.
Members of the now “anti-Kasselakis” SYRIZA political secretariat announced on Thursday that “it (secretariat) received serious allegations backed by evidence against former President Stefanos Kasselakis, involving false ‘source of wealth declaration’ submitted to both Parliament and the party.”
The internal party body asserted that they “will show no tolerance toward unlawful activities, no matter the political affiliation of those involved.”
Kasselakis’ Response
The 36-year-old political leader who emerged as an “unknown” on Greece’s often labyrinthine political scene more than a year ago responded in a post on X.
Kasselakis emphasized that he is “immediately taking legal action against the slanderers” who, as he said, distorted his source of wealth declaration, while adding that he “hasn’t made single euro or dollar illegally.”
He addressed the new party leadership by saying that “they aren’t ignorant, as I initially believed; they are executing a planned scheme because they fear what is clean and new.”
“Now, liberated, I am determined to defend my dignity,” he concluded.
