It has become known as Greece's Watergate: spyware software and Greek intelligence targeted the mobile phones of government ministers, senior military officers, judges, and journalists.
Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has called it a scandal, but no government officials have been charged in court and critics accuse the government of trying to cover up the truth.
Instead, a low-ranking judge will on Wednesday hear the case against two Israelis and two Greeks, allegedly involved with marketing spy software known as Predator.
What we know
In the summer of 2022, the current head of socialist party Pasok, Nikos Androulakis - then an MEP - was informed by the EU Parliament's IT experts that he had received a malicious text message from an unknown sender, containing spy software.
This Predator spyware, which is marketed by the Athens-based Israeli company Intellexa, can access a device's messages, camera, and microphone – turning a person's phone against them.
Things escalated after Androulakis also discovered that he had been tracked for national security reasons by Greece's National Intelligence Service (EYP).
Just a month after taking office in the summer of 2019, PM Kyriakos Mitsotakis had placed EYP directly under his supervision.
His conservative government was suddenly at the heart of the crisis. The head of EYP, Panagiotis Kontoleon, resigned, as did the prime minister's top aide and nephew, Grigoris Dimitriadis, who was the liaison between EYP and the PM's office.
Predator had been used in attempts to entrap at least 87 people, according to the Hellenic Data Protection Authority. Twenty-seven of those put under surveillance were simultaneously monitored by EYP, including serving ministers and senior military officers.
Despite criticism that the common targets by EYP and Predator implied a common strategy of surveillance, the government insisted that this was a coincidence and that no law enforcement agency had ever used Predator, which was illegal in Greece at that time. A new law passed in 2022 has since legalized state security use of surveillance software under strict conditions.
But the government did not answer why the secret services had spied on the Chief of National Defence General Staff, Lieutenant General Konstantinos Floros, and Kostis Hatzidakis, then cabinet member and today vice president of the government.
Was the government involved?
After the scandal broke out, the Greek government introduced a new law on the confidentiality of communications.
There are now more safeguards for law enforcement authorities, but at the same time, the new legislation has been criticized because it effectively deprives citizens of the right to learn if they had previously been under surveillance.
In addition, the Greek government received criticism for its lack of willingness to find out who was spying on its ministers and members of the army - criticism that only mounted after authorities raided the offices of Intellexa in Athens months after the wiretapping scandal broke out. They left empty-handed.
Christos Rammos, a former senior judge and president of the Hellenic Authority for Communication Security and Privacy (ADAE) at the time the scandal broke out, was a key figure in uncovering the facts behind the wiretapping. It was not easy, and he faced many obstacles.
The wiretapping scandal has attracted international scrutiny, especially since one of the first victims, Nikos Androulakis, was an MEP. The European Parliament set up a special Committee of Inquiry to investigate the use of Pegasus and similar surveillance software (PEGA).
Sophie in 't Veld, the Rapporteur of the committee, stated that the Greek government had made every possible attempt to conceal the truth and refused cooperation at every turn. The whole spyware thing is not something that you can see in isolation. It's used to silence critical voices and stifle scrutiny. But the damage has been done; it's had a chilling effect, she added.
